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? 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.
5 Actions to Improve Leadership Development in Your Firm
Filed under: Developing Others, Developing Yourself, Leadership Tip of the Day
When it comes to leadership development, sweeping corporate mandates and expensive training initiatives are rarely as effective as consistent blocking and tackling.
Your own practices are capable of creating a new and next generation of professionals that carry the right approaches and ultimately innovate and improve upon your achievements.
5 Actions You Can Take Now To Start a Leadership Revolution in your Firm:
1. Always strive to set the the example of the effective leader. No one is perfect, but word travels fast through an organization when some one and some team is meeting and beating targets, innovating, problem solving and somehow becoming a magnet for talent from other areas.
2. Be a relentless developer of talent: your support of the development of others through coaching, feedback, a supply of increasingly more difficult challenges and your encouragement of risk-taking in pursuit of innovation are all powerful tools at your disposal. You don’t need a budget or a training program to do any of this.
3. Encourage your team members to branch out into the organization. The better a developer of talent and the more success that you have at propagating your former team members into roles around the organization, the more likely you are to see your best leadership practices popping up all over the place.
4. Work leadership development into the corporate conversation. Ensure that strategy discussions ultimately encompass talent discussions…because no strategy can be executed without the right talent in place. Once there is broader awareness, encourage your peers to engage in activities that promote discussions and that lead to actions. An example is the simple, low-cost “leadership book club” activity that I’ve seen work so successfully at the senior and front-line leadership levels. Tie development actions to lessons-learned from the reading activities.
5. Build leadership development accountability into the organization. Hold your managers accountable for proving that they get it and are living it in the prosecution of their jobs.
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NOTE: Don’t miss the latest Management Excellence newsletter with newsletter-only features on “Coping with Leadership Fatigue” and “A Summer of Ideas.” Register to receive the newsletter at either Building Better Leaders or at the Management Excellence blog. (Right column)
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