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.
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.
4 Ideas for Avoiding Groupthink on Your Team
Filed under: Decisions, Leadership & Career, Leadership Tip of the Day
Groupthink is one of the most common and nefarious decision-making traps of otherwise well-intentioned teams.
While many of us have heard of Groupthink and the historical example that is frequently cited in textbooks, the Kennedy administration’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, this decision-making trap is not just reserved for executives and Presidents.
Know the Signs:
Groupthink occurs when team members are more concerned about consensus than anything else. Good judgment disappears, as does tolerance for doubts and doubters. The pursuit of outside information is rejected or avoided, and alternative opinions are not actively sought after.
Groups heading down this path often begin to develop a false sense of overconfidence and even an attitude of invulnerability. Doubters are pushed out of the way and requests for outside information are ignored.
5 Ideas to Stop Groupthink Before You Slide Too Far:
If you sense the slide down the slippery slope of Groupthink, there are a number of actions that can help save the day and prevent a decision-making disaster:
1. Engage outside opinions, pronto!
2. Ratchet up the robust dialogue. Overcome the social niceties and start talking about the tough issues confronting the team.
3. Unleash the Devil’s Advocate and let him/her challenge the group’s thinking.
4. Gain help from an external facilitator and incorporate alternative methods of evaluation and idea/risk generation. The Delphi technique or Six Hats Thinking are both powerful approaches that reduce the tendency towards aberrant group behaviors.
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Don’t fool yourself. This trap is easy to fall into and difficult to extract yourself from once you’re caught. Learn the signs and take quick action to save the day and the decision!
The Words and Decisions of Questionable Leaders
Filed under: Decisions, Developing Key Skills, Leadership Tip of the Day
“That’s an important issue that you’ve raised, and we should talk about it and decide at the right time.”
For this manager, it was never the right time.
“I’m not making a decision until the facts are clear and I’m comfortable.”
The facts were never quite clear enough and she was most definitely never comfortable.
“I don’t care what the competitors are doing, we’re not getting into the low-end of this market. There’s no margin in it.”
The low end of the market became the market. This company is gone.
“We’ve stuck with this project too long to back away.”
It’s never too long to back away. Quit throwing good money after bad.
“The group is convinced that this is the right way to go.”
Beware of groups that are convinced of anything. They have an annoying habit of talking themselves into bad ideas.
“Because I said so.”
Hey, my parents quit using that one years ago.
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Recognize that you are measured by the impact of your decisions in the long-term and you are judged by your choice of words every time you open your mouth.
Use Ben Franklin’s method of logging your decisions and tracking and reviewing your results over time. Identify flaws and shortcomings in your process for evaluating and making decisions and refine your approach.
And remember that in all circumstances your mouth is controlled by your brain. Use your brain before engaging your mouth.
Help Your Team Pass the “Walk in the Door” Test
Filed under: Decisions, Leadership & Career, Leadership Tip of the Day
As you and your team members start your days by walking through the office doors or for remote associates, logging on, can everyone connect the top priorities on their “To Do” lists to the strategic priorities of your firm?
Surprisingly, in both live settings (show of hands) and anonymous surveys, a majority of mid-level and front-line managers and their employees have no qualms admitting to me that they cannot pass the “Walk in the Door” test.
In essence, a good number of people lack clear context for prioritizing initiatives and making decisions. They are left to guess about what’s most important to the firm, and this opens up the door for countless and costly mistakes in project and activity selection and time investment.
The cause of this mass failure on something so fundamental as understanding and connecting activities to priorities sits squarely on the shoulders of top management however, that’s not an excuse for you to ignore the problem.
It’s on your shoulders to ask questions, seek answers and ultimately translate your insights into critical context for your team members. Easy words, a challenging task, but one that you must take on in pursuit of passing the “Walk in the Door Test.”
Remember, it’s simply not acceptable to waste people’s time and the firm’s resources in pursuit of meaningless tasks. Arm your team with context and help the step through the door every day with a strong sense of purpose!
Boost Your Effectiveness at Work by Creating Time to Think
Most people that I know rush through their days from meeting to meeting, filling every possible gap in their schedule either with meetings or operational activities. Lunch is either a hurried affair at the desk or possibly a fast dash with a coworker or two to the local sandwich shop.
And while that is the nature of work in this world, the one thing that suffers is finding a few spare moments to think and process on how to deal with a problem or leverage an opportunity.
As challenging as it sounds, it’s important for you to find 10-minutes in your workday to block out or step away from phones and e-mail and all of the other activities that keep your brain completely occupied, and just think.
I’ve made a habit of this over my entire career and I almost always come back from my ten-minute brain break with some fresh ideas on a vexing issue. In comparing notes with colleagues, most have indicated that they have some sort of quick-refresh process that they strive to fit into their days.
5 Suggestions to Help You Create Time to Think
- Hit the stairs. If you live in a multi-story building, grab an opportunity to step into the stairwell and hike some flights.
- Walk around your office complex-weather dependent of course.
- Turn off your phones and your computer, close your door and just think. One colleague meditates and another puts on Mozart and soaks it up.
- Find an empty meeting room with a white-board and map out your ideas in living color.
- Take ten to read something. It doesn’t matter what…just something that will allow you to focus.
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Regardless of your choice, your brain and with some of the ideas above, your waist-line will thank you. Happy thinking!
A Fresh Start, a Format Change and a New Daily Feature
Something funny happened on the way to producing and writing two blogs. I discovered that I am only capable of managing one competently. Oh, and I’m certain there are at least a few management lessons here in my blogging misfire.
A little bit of background. My primary blog is Management Excellence, where I offer thoughts and ideas on best practices on a wide continuum of leadership and management content. And while I don’t pretend to have cracked the code on how to produce the world’s greatest business blog, I am confident that my three to four 700+ word essays per week offer readers some heart-felt and hard-won perspectives and ideas on improving their performance and the performance of their teams and organizations.
The flaw in my original plan here at the Building Better Leaders blog was to attempt to replicate the same format that I use at Management Excellence. And while I manage pretty effectively to never run out of ideas, I absolutely proved incapable of creating the time or mustering the creative energy needed to produce 6 or 7 full-length essays every week. Fast forward a few months with a busy training and teaching schedule…and a never-ending nagging guilt over a blog that was effectively frozen in time here at Building Better Leaders.
Blogging, Microblogging (Tweeting) and Mini-Blogging:
While business remains brisk (a good sign for the economy), I’ve managed to gain permission from my family to disappear for a few days and update both of my web sites..content, messaging and format, and also to rethink the proper use of the blog here at Building Better Leaders. My conclusion is to learn from experience and not attempt to trick myself into believing that I can redouble my efforts and pull off now what I was unable to sustain earlier. Instead, I am shifting the format to offer what I describe as a Mini-Blog…something that falls somewhere between a tweet and one of my full-fledged essays.
Leadership Tip(s) of the Day:
While I’m hopeful that I will come up with a far more compelling name than “Leadership Tip of the Day,” until such time as that creative brainstorm occurs, the blog here at Building Better Leaders will henceforth consist of a “Leadership Tip of the Day.” (Hey, how often do you get to use the word, “henceforth?”)
The notion of the “Tip” will constrain my usual desire to expand into a full-fledged essay, and the implication that a “tip” is something helpful and useful will push me on the quality front. I suspect that I may exceed the singular constraint of “Tip” by offering multiple suggestions, short-lists and other compound suggestions, but I will absolutely keep them short and sweet.
OK Enough…What’s Today’s “Tip,” Art?
See, it’s working already! OK, here goes…with an emphasis on my own lessons-learned in the process of attempting to bite off more than I could digest.
The First Post: 4 Lessons Learned from A Blogging Misfire that You Can Apply in Everyday Situations:
- Be mature and self-aware enough to recognize when you’ve made a mistake. In spite of my true desire to create and deliver two full-fledged blogs, I misfired on my ability to execute.
- Before changing course, consider alternative approaches to realizing your original goals. The intent and objectives might be good…and the execution the problem.
- Take action quickly to change direction once you’ve recognized your mistake. (Do as I say, not as I did!)
- Beware “escalation of commitment” issues, where in spite of evidence to the contrary, you stubbornly pursue your original path. It can be a soul-searching and difficult process to recognize whether you are on a fool’s errand. In these situations, it’s critical to have someone in your life that is comfortable telling you that your baby is ugly.
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Now, what should I do about that dual Twitter identity?
The Leader’s Journey from Fear to Self Confidence
Filed under: Decisions, Developing Key Skills, Developing Yourself, Leadership & Career
In spite of the popular myth of the fearless leader, it is my belief that a large number of leaders at all levels struggle with fear. Some work through their fears on the way to developing self-confidence and others battle it daily and resort to various coping strategies, including over-compensating with extreme aggression or extreme timidity.
Learning to positively and productively cope with fear is an important part of developing as a leader.
My observations on fear are just that…observations gained in the workplace and through my own mentoring activities. This is not a water-cooler topic of conversation, nor is it one that jumps to the top of the noble and lofty “leader as mythical being” found in the majority of leadership writings.
Fear is palpable for humans, and those placed in positions of responsibility for leading others share the same issues as the rest of the population. Showing fear and vulnerability in the workplace is perceived as something to be avoided at all costs for all employees, and doubly so for those in leadership roles. Nonetheless, it exists.
Common Fears of Leaders:
- Early career leaders are often giant bundles of unspoken fears where everything is foreign and guidance is often nowhere to be found. They perceive that they are responsible for everything yet they don’t know how to do anything.
- Many individuals worry that it will be discovered that they are actually bluffing their way through their days and they fear being outed as frauds either to their team members or their bosses. There are often two different groups for this one. There are the conscientious individuals that are learning on the job and that few would perceive as disingenuous. And then there are those that truly don’t get it and as a result, they adopt bluster and bravado as their best friends.
- Many leaders fear specific tasks such as delivering feedback, dealing with personal and team conflict, interacting with senior management or getting up in front of the entire company to provide an update. The common response to these issues is avoidance.
- Fear of losing power drives some leaders to engage in all manner of destructive or at least counter-productive activities in an attempt to strengthen their hold on their slice of the kingdom.
- Fear of making decisions is often driven by political fear or the fear of being visible as having been “wrong,” and the result is an unwillingness to take risks and make decisions.
I could go on, but I’m at risk of practicing psychology with a license here, so let’s move to some solutions and coping strategies. A quick note…for those of you reading this far and looking forward to me launching on the evil leaders, you’ll have to wait for another day. The suggestions below are focused on helping well-intentioned professionals and leaders learn to cope with, overcome or at least harness their fears for productive use.
4 Suggestions for Overcoming Common Fears:
1. Dealing with anxieties around “what to do?”
Accept the reality that one of the key challenges and opportunities of leading comes from dealing with ambiguity. On the one hand, there is often not a clear way forward, so you are on your own or at least on your own with your team members to figure it out. The good news is that no one else knows the absolute right answer for most situations, including your boss or the CEO. Seek out the best information given the circumstances, involve your team members in developing ideas and approaches and help everyone move forward. If you’ve made a mistake, work with the team and take corrective action based on the lessons learned.
2. Dealing with the anxiety of, “I’m not sure how to lead.”
Regardless of how your role as a leader came about, someone somewhere observed something in you beyond just a heartbeat, so quit worrying about how you got there and start focusing on learning the role. My guidance is to arm yourself with a good understanding of the role of a leader-there are ample sources at your fingertips that describe this, including my version of The Leader’s Charter. Know your role, align your priorities around helping, enabling and supporting your team members and don’t look back. While we are born with various attributes that might help or hinder our leadership skills, in my opinion, most leaders are made. The only way to learn to lead is by leading.
3. Overcoming fear of tasks-the feedback dilemma.
It’s widely understood that the ability to deliver constructive, behavioral focused feedback is one of the most important tools and activities of a leader. It’s ironic then that in surveys and workshops, this activity is consistently identified as a personal weakness. Why?
People fear negative reactions, they fear suddenly not being liked or respected, or they lack the self-confidence to politely assert on the behaviors and actions required for the mission. Ironically, employees on the other hand generally value respectful behavioral feedback and grow frustrated when they don’t receive it.
Overcoming the fear of delivering feedback or the fear of public speaking is best accomplished through a combination of study and practice. There are ample sources on learning the very logical and simple approaches to delivering feedback and dealing with conflict (plug: including the Building Better Leaders programs), so take the time to learn the processes and best and worst practices and then go out and put this knowledge to work. The directions to Carnegie Hall are still the same: practice, practice, practice.
4. Dealing with a fear of making decisions.
You will be wrong. Probably more often than you would like to consider. Now get over it. The only thing worse than making a wrong decision is holding your team hostage by never making a decision.
I encourage and mentor young leaders on simple decision-making and risk analysis models and like any of the skills-based fears, as you add some context and structure to your thinking and then practice the activity in live-fire settings, your confidence will quickly expand.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Facing up to fear as a leader is an important part of growing up and succeeding. Ultimately, you will need to develop the right balance of self-confidence tinged with fearlessness and wrapped in a bit of humility to succeed.
Teams smell and sense fear and that breeds uncertainty in the working environment. On the other hand, teams and individuals sense bluster and bravado and that is destructive as well.
Learn to confront your fears head on and seek out the tools and training necessary to hone your skills. Then, put this to work and recognize that no one expects you to be perfect…but everyone expects you learn, grow and improve and to help them do the same. As you overcome your fears, remember to pay it forward.
The Leader’s Daily Reminder List
Filed under: Decisions, Developing Key Skills, Developing Others, Developing Yourself
The gravitational pull of New Year’s lists is almost too powerful to overlook. You can hardly take a stroll through the blogosphere right now without tripping over these lofty, noble goals intended to guide behavior and ensure that we end up new people by the end of next year.
New Year’s resolutions ebb and flow much like health club attendance, spiking in January and returning to normalcy sometime in February, when those that are dedicated to daily fitness are thankful for a bit more breathing and sweating room.
I expressed my opinion on the ineffectiveness of making annual resolutions in January in a recent Leadership Caffeine post entitled, “An Effective Leader’s Resolutions are Calendar Blind.”
Translation: good leaders work on improving their blocking and tackling every single day. My suggestion is for you to create a “Leader’s Reminder List” and reference it every morning over breakfast, or keep it in your car and briefcase and review it before you walk through the door into the office.
Nine Starter Suggestions for Your Daily Leader’s Reminder List:
- Remind yourself that it is your goal today to improve your performance as a leader.
- Walk in the door with a smile on your face and take the long way around to your office and personally greet the early risers.
- Control your own calendar and manage the time allocation to ensure a preponderance of time for observation, coaching and delivering feedback. Calendar misuse and abuse is a huge contributor to leadership ineffectiveness. Don’t let yourself be victimized by the tyranny of others scheduling your time into useless oblivion.
- Speaking of calendars, what can you do to simplify and minimize the administrative time demand that you are placing on the people that work for you? Help your team members find some calendar time—and teach them to use this time properly and watch productivity soar.
- Spend more time listening and asking questions every single day. Translation: talk less. Your artful use of questioning and your reduction in hot air time will also free up time for everyone involved and improve the performance environment on your team.
- Spend more time engaging with your boss and your peers. Again, emphasize questions that help to uncover performance issues, opportunities for goals alignment and opportunities for innovation. Be certain to share your insights from these conversations with your team members.
- Find ways to encourage constructive debate on the tough issues. Improve the quality and openness of your team’s culture, and you will improve performance.
- Teach the art of decision-making to your team. Of course, this assumes that you have a good decision-making process of your own and that you avoid snap decisions that end up being countermanded or that you actually make timely decisions instead of holding your team hostage. Work to foster the processes that facilitate team and individual decision-making.
- Respond to adversity with grace and turn the most difficult and disappointing of outcomes into opportunities to teach and improve.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
While you may very well have some long-range performance improvement goals, I encourage you to exercise your leadership muscle on a daily basis and improve one work-day and one workout at a time. Do this, and you will be a very different leader sooner instead of later.
Decisions, Decisions-How’s Your Decision Making Agility?
A Building Better Leaders Briefing:
Your decision-making style and pace directly impact your team’s performance. Wait for perfect clarity before putting your stamp on a key decision and you will have metaphorically held your team hostage. Jump too fast and make off-the-cuff calls and your errors and reversals will climb. (A reversal is that decision that countermands an earlier decision that turned out to be wrong.)
Early career professionals often struggle with “fear of the unknown.” They are new and lack a base of experience to draw upon and to help frame situations. As a result, they often hesitate to make a call, because they are not certain what’s on the other side of their decision.
Experienced professionals tend to have a better understanding of the issues surrounding a decision, but are often fearful of having their name attached to a decision that turns out to be wrong. Instead of putting themselves in what they perceive as harms way, they will hunker down and forestall making a call, much to the chagrin of team members.
And some professionals suffer from “Ready, Fire, Aim” syndrome, where they take pride in making instantaneous battle-field calls.
All of these styles breed inefficiency and dysfunction in the working environment.
Decisions are in large part about managing risk and there are a few simple questions that you can ask and answer to yourself that can help you improve your decision-making effectiveness.
Key Questions to Ask and Answer to Improve Your Decision Making Effectiveness:
- What is the implication of not making this decision? Will the lack of a decision hurt the business or strengthen a competitor? Am I holding a colleague hostage by not making this decision?
- How time sensitive is the issue?
- Recognizing that perfect information is rare, do I have a reasonable amount of information to make this decision?
- What is the benefit of making the decision? Does this help the business? Does this enable a colleague or team to proceed?
- What is the worst-case implication of this decision being wrong? Is this business threatening? Job threatening?
- How can I mitigate the worst-case scenario to resolve this decision-dilemma? Talk with my boss? Engage other colleagues or leaders?
In My Experience:
Over my career, I’ve typically found that not making a decision is more damaging than making one with incomplete information. Experienced decision-makers develop the ability to process the questions above at the right level of detail and at the right pace and determine whether the information is sufficient and the risks manageable.
While our experience can lead to “framing errors,” where we incorrectly assume that we understand the context of the decision, I’ve found that sanity checking my thinking with other trusted advisors….those willing to tell me that I’m nuts, helps as well.
There’s no easy cure for the dysfunctional culture that preaches innovation and risk-taking and then metaphorically shoots those that make decisions that don’t work out as planned, but, you can hedge your risk by involving others. Develop your answers to the questions above and share these answers with other stakeholders (boss, peers, executives) and get them invested in the issue. Don’t ask them for a decision…that’s your job, but, you can absolutely inform them of your approach and the risks and benefits and at least gain their acknowledgement if not agreement of your recommendation.
The Bottom-Line:
Work hard to hone your decision-making skills and be sensitive to any tendency to forestall based on fear or to rush based on gut, without having thought through the questions. It’s a balancing act that requires the development of your decision-making agility.
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