Don’t Expect Easy-My Top 15 Suggestions for Coping as a Professional

“Easy” is not a term that should be on your mind, except when it comes to improving the experience for your customers. Outside of making life easier for your customers, there are few circumstances where “easy” shows up or where you are justified in expecting things to go that way.

If you’re at the early stage of your career, the transition from home to school to job is an interesting one.  If you are a recent graduate, chance are that you’ve already discovered that things aren’t so easy in this economy as you pound the pavement looking for a job.  While this awkward phase will pass in time, your immersion in the workforce will underscore why “easy” is a foreign term.

And of course, if you’ve been around the block a few times, you’ve already discovered that “easy” is rare indeed.

Things That Are Most Definitely Not Easy in Business:

• Working for a difficult boss
• Becoming a boss
• Becoming a good boss
• Finding great people
• Hiring the right people
• Undoing the process of hiring the wrong people
• Competing in the market
• Competing internally
• Leading without authority
• Creating a new strategy
• Implementing a new strategy
• Getting others to follow
• Following
• Making mistakes
• Learning from mistakes
• Developing as a senior contributor
• Switching jobs
• Switching careers
• Continuing your education
• Reinventing yourself
• Balancing life and work

Guidance-My Top 15 Suggestions for Coping with “Not Easy”

1. I’ve known a few people that seemed to have a free-pass through life’s difficulties, but for the rest of us, here are my suggestions and words of encouragement:
2. Attitude is everything.  Make certain that yours stays positive about the challenges in front of you.
3. There is no substitute for hard work.  Keep pushing the rock.
4. Success is in the details.  Don’t be a 70-percenter.  Learn to finish.
5. It’s all about learning.  Mistakes are your best teachers, just don’t make the same ones over and over again.
6. As my former boss would say, “Man plans and god laughs.”  Interpret that to mean that things mostly don’t go as you expect them to.
7. Hope is a crappy strategy.  See also the note on hard work.
8. You’ll make mistakes.  Don’t wallow for more than a few minutes.  Then shrug your shoulders and move on to your next challenge.
9. There are no guarantees.  There are no guarantees of how long any of us will be here, much less guarantees of employment and advancement.
10. You’ll have to work for everything you get.  Get over it.
11. Fear is the mind-killer. I love that quote from Frank Herbert.  Don’t let fear rule your life.
12. Measure-twice and cut once.  An extra emphasis on quality will serve you well.
13. Compensation is nice.  Ultimately enough is enough.  It’s a hollow goal to just chase the money.
14. The joy is in the journey, not the destination.
15. Touch people in the right way during your journey.  You go through this once.  Make it count.

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Notes from Art:

-Don’t miss the latest issue of the Management Excellence Newsletter.  Register at Building Better Leaders or Management Excellence (far right column)

-Just announced: The Management Excellence Book Series, with episode #1 featuring an interview with Bob Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss.

Beware the Pull of “Us Versus Them”

It’s easy to get caught up in departmental or team squabbles inside of organizations.  My advice: stay clear, stay out of it and learn to think and act for yourself.

Some functional squabbles are legendary.  Sales versus Marketing.  Marketing versus Development. Marketing and the rest of the organization.  Hey, maybe Marketing is the problem here! Perhaps if we put that group in their place… . (Just testing you.)

Stay clear!

Us versus Them squabbles are commonplace and destructive. “They don’t understand what we do.”  “They’re not in front of customers like we are.”  “They think that we just sit down at our computers and magically, new software code spews forth.”

It’s not about they or them, it’s about us and we.

People that view departmental walls and boundaries as fixed and even as important are misguided.  The focus is and must be on creating value for customers, on differentiating versus competitors and on finding as many ways as possible to improve efficiency and effectiveness.  While people might have a home base and a vocational orientation (marketing, sales, engineering etc.), there is no one group more important than the other.

You are all dependent upon each other.

The challenge to innovate often breeds dedicated “innovation” teams where a new form of “Us versus Them” develops.  One group, the innovators are cool and free from much of the bureaucracy that everyone else lives with on a daily basis.  The other group: operations, work to provide the funding that allows the innovators to do their thing.  Managers best beware of the potential for this situation to create divisions and hard feelings.

The challenges and solutions for managers to resolve silo problems and turf wars revolve around attention, constant communication, mutual respect and the creation of an environment of accountability for working together.  All groups are critical…all groups are valuable for many reasons.

As for you as an individual contributor or leader, steer clear of attempts to draw you into the divisions. The temptations is strong.  When you feel the urge to rail about another group, skip the moaning and reach out to a counterpart in that group and find a mutual way forward.  You’ll be happy that you did.

Show Respect by Paying Attention

I trot this anecdote every once in awhile because to this day, it’s still the best example that I’ve observed of a senior manager that missed the memo on the need to engage with her team members.

This individual was uncomfortable making decisions and engaging in difficult discussions, and she had what I describe as a “dodge and deflect” strategy for dealing with the pleas from her staff for face or air-time.  Her response to an inquiry would typically be something to the effect of, “That’s an important issue and we should talk about it at the right time.”

Guess when it was the right time?

If you guessed, “Never!” you’re right.

This senior leader not only frustrated her team members and slowed progress to a halt, but by dodging their need to express ideas to improve the business, she showed extreme professional disrespect for her colleagues.

Another manager that I coached had a habit of engaging in extended discussions while sending e-mails on his p.d.a.  While he heard and acknowledged the words from the individual attempting to communicate with him, we all know that it’s impossible to pull-off this type of multi-tasking and realize a quality communication experience.  In interviews, this manager’s employees indicated that they were both frustrated and offended by this poor approach.

And finally, a senior leader that I coached had invested years in avoiding operational discussions with his team members. While on one hand, he let them “do their jobs,” on the other hand, it was fairly frustrating for the team members to go for years without being able to engage, update, seek advice or even politely show-off what their teams were achieving.  This omission of attention showed a distinct lack of respect not only for the managers, but for the team members of the managers.

Take-Aways:

There are a million opportunities for us to shortchange conversations in pursuit of the urgent important.  It takes discipline and the recognition that your attention as a leader is one of the best ways that you have for conveying your respect for individuals and teams.  These are golden opportunities worth considerably more than whatever efficiency you thought you were gaining from minimizing contact.

It costs nothing to pay attention and the return on investment is priceless!  Perhaps it’s time to slow down and show some respect.

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.

Take Responsibility for Your Own Development

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.

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.

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:

1. What’s working?
2. What’s not?
3. 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

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

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.

–

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? What Skills Do I Need to Succeed? #5 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 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.

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