Don’t Spend Too Much Time with the Wrong People

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? Consider These Questions: #7 of 7

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:

1. Why do you want to lead?
2. Do you understand the true role of a leader?
3. Do you understand that the skills that made you successful as an individual contributor are not the skills that will carry you forward?
4. Are you prepared to give up your domain expertise as your foundation for results?
5. What do you believe are the skills and personality traits that you need to succeed as a leader?
6. 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.

July Issue of the Management Excellence e-Newsletter: Subscriber Only Content

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

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? #3 of 7-Your Individual Contributor Skills No Longer Count!

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

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?”

Want to Lead? Answer These Questions! Number 1 of 7

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.

Tripping Points and the Leader

Note from Art: this post originally appeared as The Five Tripping Points of Emerging Leaders at my Management Excellence blog. The five points are important and bear repeating.

Firms and teams run into natural Tripping Points in the form of infrastructure and know-how as they work to grow a firm from start-up to $10 million or from $10 million to $25 million and so on.  Often, the only viable solution to get beyond a Tripping Point is to retool the management team with people that have experience creating the infrastructure and programs/teams/processes needed to reach the next few levels.

I can easily apply Tripping Point thinking to the challenges that we as professionals face in advancing our careers and in particular, in developing as leaders.  Awareness of your prospective Tripping Points is an important first step in creating your personal and professional development plan.

The Five Tripping Points of Leaders:

1. Strategic thinking skills-the ability to see the big picture, to look at patterns in the marketplace and assemble pictures that others don’t see into competitive, value-creating strategies.

2. Business acumen-Ram Charan describes this as the ability of the leader to understand how the firm makes money in the language of a street vendor.

3. Inbound communication skills-especially the ability to ask questions, listen intently and interpret what people truly mean or are thinking, which is often different than the words they are voicing.

4. Outbound communication skills-the ability to translate complex ideas into simple concepts that resonate with others and that promote positive action.

5. Diplomatic skills-the ability to broker value-creating relationships and resolve disputes with the finesse of an ambassador.
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The Tripping Points have profound implications for us as we seek to grow and expand in our careers, and they are THE issues we need to focus on as we seek to develop others around us.

As simple as the points are, we are often blind to our own limitations in these areas.  So are the people you are seeking to develop.

Use the Tripping Points as filters to evaluate the advancement and maturity of your team members, and as the basis for creating developmental assignments.  Use these points as the basis for coaching and feedback.

For your own purposes, seek feedback and coaching about the perception of your competence and maturity in each of these areas. Be aware of your limitations and areas of discomfort, and if necessary, design your own developmental assignments to ensure that you gain experience and refine your skills in the right areas.

We all have Tripping Points, and while perhaps there are truly limits to our individual abilities, I remain convinced that with awareness, focused effort and coaching, we can advance our skils and increase our contributions to our firms.

5 Actions to Improve Leadership Development in Your Firm

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)

Leaders Teach

I’ve long believed that the best leaders are teachers. Not lecturers, but teachers.  As teachers, they challenge us to think, to explore, to experiment, to learn and to keep trying.

Good leaders encourage us to find joy and energy in the journey of discovery and they remind us that the satisfaction from finding the answer is momentary and should quickly be replaced with more searching and more learning.

The best leaders…like teachers let us fail in order to learn. They offer encouragement when needed and tough-love when it the situation demands it.  They teach us to be accountable to ourselves…and to set exceeding high standards for our own performance.

Great teachers and great leaders challenge us to reach and strive. They might step in if we’re about to fall off a cliff or to cross the street without looking, but they’ll wince and stand by as we fall and skin our knees or as we settle out our playground disputes.

Leaders teach and someday in the future, the student becomes the teacher and the cycle starts anew.

Are you a teacher?

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