Leadership

leadership tune up

Are your standards slipping? What’s the overall feel in your department or business? How’s the energy on a daily basis – good, bad, ok but a little low? Are you proud of the work your folks put out, concerned, or hoping and waiting for it to turn around and get better?

Once things start to slip a little, they generally continue to slip. Over time we tend to adjust. We stop striving, we coast a little, we put our attention on something else. We don’t notice it at first, but after a while we realize things are really out of sync and we wonder how it got so bad so quickly.

Well, it didn’t. People don’t suddenly stop caring either. They don’t just wake up one day and decide to never again give their full effort. But us humans will give 99% effort of the day before. Think about that. A difference of only 1% less effort, less energy, less engagement. That’s barely noticeable. In fact, if it went right back up to 100% the following day, we’d never even notice the blip. Likewise, if it drops another 1%, we’ll likely never feel it. Until we do…

My car started running rough a month or two ago. It started off intermittently. I thought it was just a bad tank of gas at first. It would hesitate, idle roughly, or even die at stoplights. Then it would be fine for a few weeks. But the gaps between kept getting closer and closer until, one day out of the blue (not really) it started to run poorly all the time.

At 80,000 miles I figured it was due for a tune up. The manufacture says it goes 100,000 miles before it needs spark plugs. The forums say real world is more like 60-80,000 miles. Theoretical is nice, but it doesn’t help my car run better. $20 worth of spark plugs and 30 minutes of effort and it’s running great again.

Most striking wasn’t that it was idling and accelerating smoothly again – I expected that. No, the biggest surprise was how much better it runs. It accelerates quicker and revs more freely. Going from bad to acceptable was expected. But the subtle yet noticeable difference between acceptable and really good was actually a bit astonishing.

It was that 1% difference. I never noticed when it slipped from great to good, but I did notice good to poor. That has me really wondering about my own leadership. I would notice if my area suddenly performed poorly, but would it really catch my attention if it gradually declined to acceptable?

Would I notice if the energy was consistently getting a little worse? Would I notice if overall customer service slipped a little? Could I tell the difference if my team had tapered over time to being mostly engaged?

I’m not so sure I could and that has me worried. Tuning up our leadership is not quite as easy as changing spark plugs, but probably needs to be done regularly. So what can I, you, or any leader do about it? Hmmm. A few thoughts come to mind and I’d love to get your perspective:

Discuss your vision and ideals. A lot. More than you think your need to. Your vision should excite you, so use that enthusiasm to get others on board and understand your expectations. They don’t have to have your passion (it’s nice if they do) but they do need to be completely clear on where you stand and the level of performance you want.

Be straight forward and tell the team your concerns that standards could slip over time. Tell them that you’ll be more involved and have more feedback. Not to be nitpicky or a micromanager, but because you care. You want them to be at their best. You want the team at its best. You want to be at your best.

Ask for feedback from the team about your own performance. Do you seem different lately? Do you have less energy or seem less engaged? Maybe they’ll tell you and maybe they won’t, but you owe it to them and yourself to ask. [Quick caveat: never ask for feedback if you are not 100% willing to consider it and do something about it.]

Shatter isolation by getting the team involved in cross-functional projects, both within the team and throughout the organization. It helps prevent a narrowing view and helps invigorate things with new ideas.

Ask the questions about what’s going great and what could improve regularly. Don’t expect people to come to you. Go to them.

What else?

feedback, the overlooked advantage

Organizations only improve when individuals improve. People simply cannot improve without feedback. Most people and most organizations struggle because the only thing harder than giving good feedback is receiving it.

Jason Lauritsen recently wrote a great post titled “Flipping the Script on Feedback”. Lots of interesting points about feedback, but what really struck me was his comment: …teach people how to receive [feedback] rather than spending so much time worrying about the way in which your managers deliver it.

I was struck by what a friend used to call a blinding flash of the obvious. Duh! We spend all this time trying to teach managers to deliver feedback well – which is important – and miss the most crucial link. If the employee is not good at receiving feedback, it doesn’t matter how well it’s delivered. If they are good at receiving it, then they will still try to benefit from it even if the delivery is poor. Obviously, training on giving and receiving feedback isn’t mutually exclusive, but his post serves as an important reminder that both sides of the equation are important.

As I think about it, I wonder why organizations don’t place much, much greater emphasis on developing every employee and manager to be truly great at giving and receiving feedback. After all, we will never (read as: NEVER) create a high performing organization, department, team, family, etc. without the ability to honestly give and learn from feedback. It’s a pretty straightforward equation: the more receptive to feedback (data) we are, the more people share ideas and information with us, the better the information we have, the better the decisions we make and actions we take, the better results we get. AND the better we are able to assess, evaluate, revise and improve.

I suspect that downplaying or dismissing the importance of feedback is simply another symptom of the misguided belief that business results are somehow separate from the people in the business.

Better people = better results. Period.

the toughest part about leadership development

Becoming a better leader is difficult, no doubt there. Many, many books and classes exist to help you, but there is one particular challenge that rarely gets mentioned, yet is at the heart of all real leadership development. Here it is, you might want to commit it to memory:

All leadership development is personal development.

You can get promoted into a leadership role with very little leadership ability. It’s sometimes just a matter of tenure, being in the right place at the right time, or being very technically skilled and having no other career path available. And there are a lot (emphasis on a lot) of bad managers out there whose people get results despite their poor leadership skills. But we’re not talking about continuing on as a bad manager, we’re talking about growing and developing as a leader.

You can never become a better leader without first becoming a better you. Your team won’t get better until you get better. You cannot sustainably get more out of others without getting more out of yourself. That’s not quick. It’s not easy. It’s not sexy. And it’s a hard sell. But it is truth.

Say it again with me: All leadership development is personal development.

 

nontroversy in the workplace

Want more engagement and less knee-jerk decisions? Eliminate nontroversies.

A nontorversy is a controversy that isn’t. It’s artificial, manufactured, or falsely amplified. It’s a non-issue that is given more time and energy than is due. It’s making mountains out of molehills.

Nontorversies are easily seen in the political arena and talk radio. They are used as daily distraction and attempt to discredit opponents over non-issues.

Nontroversies are created in the workplace by the rumor mills, passive-aggressive people, complainers, people who create unnecessary drama as a hobby, or those who play cutthroat corporate politics. Some common examples:

Continual complaining about issues they don’t really care about.

Inflating the severity of other people’s mistakes so it goes several levels up the chain of command before everyone discovers it was very minor.

Creating new rules and policies before investigating how prevalent and persistent an issue is.

Over-reaction to pending legislation. Panicking before even knowing what it’s going to look like in real life.

Focusing on the fad and buzzword of the day.

Continually positioning oneself (or department) as the hero whenever anything goes wrong, no matter how minor.

Two faced complaining and finger pointing.

Finding flaws in other’s work to make oneself look better.

Over-labeling events. Forever referring to that time five people got laid off as “Black Tuesday.”

Harboring anger and resentment for issues that happened years ago and have long since been resolved.

Trauma and drama sell. People seem to love to gripe and find flaws and complain about any change. Nontroversies thrive wherever there is a lack of transparent, authentic, honest communication but they can pop up anywhere. That is their nature. Yesterday’s nontroversy is today’s old (yawn) news. Today’s nontraversy will be replaced with another tomorrow. Nontraversies don’t need substance. They don’t need logic. They don’t have to have a long shelf-life. They just need to give us something to overact to today.

High performing teams and companies can’t (and don’t) waste time and energy on non-issues. What are you doing to eliminate drama ? How do you keep the nontroversies at bay?

what the workplace needs now

Some days I’d love to just tweak the workplace a bit. Do less of some things and more of others. Little stuff to improve things. Below is a wish list of what the workplace really needs right now. Wouldn’t it be great if we could each do our part and contribute to creating a workplace where there’s:

Less doing, more talking.

Fewer problem solvers, more problem spotters.

Less direct feedback, more gossip.

Less honesty, more passive-aggressiveness.

More “I tried” and less “I did”.

Less personal responsibility, more entitlement.

Less guidance, more rigid rules.

Fewer innovators, more bureaucrats.

More doom, gloom, and threats and less optimism and celebration.

More blame, less accountability.

More talk about generational differences, less consideration for individual differences.

Less reward for merit, more reward for gut-it-out longevity.

Less team, more hierarchy.

More time spent figuring out what we can sell to customers, less time spent figuring out what our customers want and value.

More subjectivity, less objectivity.

Fewer facts, more rumors.

Less communication, more silos.

More personal fiefdoms, less big picture integration.

Less time spent studying how the world and consumers are changing, more time spent copying the competition.

Less concern about authenticity, more focus on branding.

More using social media for one-way information dumps, less two-way conversations.

Less asking customers, employees, etc. what they want, more guessing.

More jargon and buzzwords, less communication.

Less unity, more schisms.

Less focus on long-term issues, more focus on management fads.

Far less emphasis on helping people be their authentic best and far more emphasis on helping people create a plastic façade.

More yelling, less development.

More micromanaging (please!) and less leading.

More tantrums, fewer attempts to work out issues.

More learned helplessness, less empowerment.

Less training, more sink or swim learning.

Less planning, more last minute emergencies.

More talking at each other, less talking to each other.

More surprises, less strategy.

Less focus on getting things done, more focus on why we can’t.

More emphasis on personal glory, less concern for the team’s success.

Oh sure, we could do it the other way and reverse all of these, but it’s much easier to continue down the current paths. Reversing things would take vision, persistence, and continuous effort.

And that’s what the workplace really needs now.

two crucial activities for leadership success

Yesterday, Steve Boese posted “Onboarding for the rest of us” and referenced the employee handbook from the gaming company Valve. You may have seen this handbook posted elsewhere, but it is very worth a read. It’s fun, irreverent, and does an amazing job of helping a new hire understand how to succeed in a unique company.

Crucial Activity #1

Valve is a completely flat organization with no (ZERO) managers so I found the insights into how that works enthralling and, although, I’m not going to be changing my company’s structure anytime soon, it would be easy to share the same types of information with new hires: your first day, facts about the company, your first month, office culture, how your performance will be evaluated, your first six months, company history, what the company is good at and what it isn’t, etc.

Yes, new hires need to know where to park and where the bathrooms are and how to sign up for benefits. AND it would be a huge boost forward if they also knew the things that Valve does such a good job of sharing.

Crucial Activity #2

Onboarding is important, but the part that left me slack jawed is in a section titled, “Your Most Important Role”: Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing. So when you’re working on hiring – participating in an interview loop or innovating in the general area of recruiting – everything else you could be doing is stupid and should be ignored!

Pause. Let that sink in. Go read it again. That’s right. They consider getting selection right is so important to their organizational success that: 1) It’s in the new hire handbook; 2) it’s in a section titled, “Your Most Important Role”;  3) it’s more important than breathing; and 4) when you are hiring, anything else you could be doing (like your regular job) is stupid and should be ignored.

Pause. Let that sink in. Go read it again.

But Wait, There’s More

Further in, they are very clear that they understand that because their company is so unique they miss out on hiring some great folks, and they’re really ok with that. No vanilla here. They are not trying to be all things to all people – they are very clear on who they are.

When we talk about interview questions, we almost always look at what we’re asking the candidates. It’s also important to think about what we’re asking ourselves as we evaluate the candidates responses. When evaluating candidates, they ask themselves three brilliant questions: Would I want this person to be my boss? Would I learn a significant amount from him or her? What if this person went to work for our competition?

Imagine if you had the hiring bar so high that you only hired people you could learn something from; people who helped you be better. That’s very intimidating for most people so few do it. And that alone is a great reason to start. Over time, this will transform your company.

Get hiring right by making it a super priority and managing gets much, much easier. Get it wrong by treating it like a distraction and an afterthought and managing gets much, much more difficult.

people will talk

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: people are talking about you.

Managers: at night, around the dinner table, your employees are telling their families all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

Employees: at night, around the dinner table, your manager is telling their family all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

Everyone: at night, around the dinner table, your co-workers and your customers are telling their family all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

No matter what level you are in the organization, no matter whether you serve internal or external customers,  the people above you, below you, and alongside you are talking about you. You can’t stop them from talking about you, it’s just the way things are. But if they are going to talk, what do you want them to say about you? How do you want them to describe you?

Be that person. Be someone worth saying great things about. Be the co-worker, employee, and leader that inspires and develops and makes a difference in the lives of all those around you.

4 types of people at work

At risk of oversimplifying, we tend to view people at work in one of four ways based on their productivity and personality. Selection, promotion, and development decisions are made based on what category we see people in.

It looks a little like this:

 

Jerk

Good with People
High Results

Tolerate?

Super Star
Low Results

Why are they here?

Tolerate?
  1. Good with people and gets great results: we all love these folks. They’re great to be around and they get things done. Co-workers like them, customers like them, and management likes them. We hate, hate, hate to see these people go.
  2. Pleasant person with low results: we tend to like them, wish they’d do more, but make allowances for them because they are easy to work with and don’t cause anyone trouble. They do a great job of building relationships and are liked by customers and liked or tolerated by co-workers and management. Nice compensates a lot for low productivity.
  3. Jerk with high results: we can’t stand them, but they are often tolerated by management because they get things done. They often don’t realize how much they are getting in their own way and how much higher their career would climb if they were easier to get along with. They don’t understand that relationships matter.
  4. Jerk who doesn’t do anything: universally hated. Don’t be this person; don’t manage this person. Any manager who keeps one of these folks on the team instantly loses credibility. They thrive in teams with weak managers and cause a disproportionate amount of damage to the culture and work environment. In an ideal world, everyone in this category would be working for your competition. Realistically, there are a few in your organization right now acting as giant brake on progress.

What do you think? Spot on? Too simple? What are your experiences with these four types of people?

three faces of leadership

No surprise, but your employees go home and talk about you with their friends and family. In fact, as their manager, you are likely a lively and ongoing topic, a subject filled with emotional highs and lows. I’ll bet they’re even talking about you right now.

As a leader, you represent (at least) three different faces to them:

  1. You as a person. Titles, roles, employment aside, how much to they like and respect you as another human being.
  2. You as their boss. Some people with like or dislike you just because you’re their boss. When you got promoted to manager your jokes automatically got funnier to some and some people automatically resented you just because you were in a position of authority.
  3. You as a representative of the company. You are the face of the company to your team and if the company does something unpopular some people will blame you regardless of how far you are removed from the decision.

This is why you can be a good person striving to be the best leader you can and still have people dislike you. That’s just some of the baggage that comes with the job.