In the face of these uncertain times, it is necessary for each of us to be brave. Though it is easier to simply follow along and protect what we currently have, we also need the courage to stand up for what is right and risk being vulnerable.
So many of us have been duped into believing social media enables us to actively write our individual history instead of actually living and sharing in a collective history. As much as we think we are freely choosing what to engage in, we are often being led by others with a financial or power incentive to make us follow along.
Politicians appeal to our worst fears and increasing insecurity in order to move their particular agenda forward. Hope and dreams are out; fear and uncertainty are in. Democracy has become more about getting a larger share for oneself rather than growing the collective pie.
This way of thinking leads to blaming another demographic for our own misfortune as it is easier than taking responsibility and doing something about it. Our nation of immigrants has somehow lost sight that this is our strength, and that regardless of where you were born, your color or creed, you have an equal opportunity to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Perhaps this is due to thinking we should all have equal opportunity rather than equitable opportunity. If this were about equity, then those who need more assistance would get more, and we would all see this as fair. Of course, this would require accepting that we are all, as American citizens (regardless of our heritage), equal in deserving opportunities.
In what is rapidly now being referred to as a post-truth world, many knowingly accept fake news from anyone and anywhere because they believe respected journalistic institutions are also fake. Somehow all news is considered equal because all internet voices are equal. Though verified factual information stands in stark contrast to ignorant opinions—because everyone has a megaphone—these are treated equally. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and the internet means we all own one.
Without a Walter Cronkite, who people once took comfort in telling us the truth, we can now choose any individual to tell us the personal truth we want to hear. Many people are no longer concerned with what is really true, but rather what is true for their current point of view. Confirmation bias runs rampant as they don’t want to debate the issues, but only reinforce their narrow perspective of what is currently true for them.
In the face of this, courageous leadership is absolutely required and we shouldn’t be looking for others to demonstrate it. We should seek this in ourselves.
In the same way the internet has leveled the playing field for our voices, we can all become leaders in our own communities by standing up to injustice in the real world. When we witness intolerance, racism or random acts of violence, we should immediately stand up against it.
This means standing up for individuals who are marginalized whether in the workplace, at school, or simply standing in line at a grocery store. When we witness an ignorant xenophobe oppressing others, it is up to each of us to stand up courageously and denounce it. We can no longer accept that staying on the fringe is okay just because our own lives are currently safe and comfortable. “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people, but the silence over that by the good people,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.
Courageous leadership is about getting outside of your comfort zone and risking to be vulnerable by defending what you stand for. Somebody once said life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. I believe we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Though hatred and mistrust are rampant in our society, we need to denounce hateful actions and encourage bridge-making. We need the patience and compassion to first understand others before seeking to be understood by them. We need to recognize our own personal hypocrisy before we attack others. To move forward in restoring trust and compassion, each of us must take a long hard look inside ourselves before blaming others.
Leading with courage means fully acknowledging oneself—including our bias, limited perspective, and overall ignorance—before seeking to influence others. Rather than build walls to divide ourselves and other like-minded people from those who are different, we should bravely seek to find common ground and better understanding.
Lead with tolerance and compassion. Assume that everyone is doing the best they can for themselves and for their families. And be the leader of the change that you want to see in yourself and others.
Let me tell you a story. Nothing perks up an audience like those few words because we are wired for story. It is in our very DNA as we have told and listened to oral stories from the very beginning of human history.
Stories are also the most entertaining and effective way to convey information and persuade others in business because they create an emotional as well as an intellectual connection. This emotional component is important because it is what stimulates us and keeps our attention.
Although we may think we are purely rational in all our business dealings, the truth is we regularly make decisions based on our feelings and only justify them through logical explanations. Advertising has long relied on the fact that we rely more on our emotions than information in order to make brand decisions. One could certainly argue we increasingly choose our elected officials based on emotion rather than factual information.
Without an effective story that has both an intellectual as well as an emotional component, it’s difficult to stand out or make a lasting impression.
Think about the number of times you’ve been in a conference room where the speaker runs through a slide deck with numbers, words, images, data, charts and graphs in order to convince you of something. Does it make you sleepy just thinking about it? No wonder so many welcome the distraction of our cellphones.
If instead the speaker would begin by telling a compelling story that appealed to our emotions and also drive the main message, the slides could merely be used as a way to further justify the point. In this way, the story engages the audience in both the head and heart.
Consider how effective storytelling is used elsewhere:
Newspaper, television and radio news stories so often begin with an individual’s story to explain a larger issue and demonstrate its effect.
TED Talks would not be nearly as effective were it not for storytelling because the speakers draw us in by telling a personal story to convey a universal truth.
Every U.S. President since Ronald Reagan has highlighted an individual citizen’s story and included him or her in his State of the Union address in order to put a face to an important issue or policy.
Think about any great speaker you have heard and how, more than likely, the speaker told a compelling story that pulled so effectively at your heart-strings.
“This is because stories do much more than entertain,” says Paul Smith, author of Lead with a Story. “They actually engage your audience’s brains, creating an experience in which they learn a lesson, share a belief, and envision results as if they were there.”
In his book, Smith provides 21 of the toughest leadership challenges with stories to help navigate each of them. The book also identifies six key elements that are integral to help turn a good story into a great one. These elements are metaphors, emotion, realism, surprise, style, and how to put your audience into your story.
As a leader, you need to use storytelling as a way to rally the troops and convince others of your ideas. Stories enable your audience to relax and be entertained while you persuade them. Stories enable the speaker to connect with others, building trust and establishing rapport. And effective stories have a way of leaving a positive impression on the speaker and on the speaker’s message.
In Tell to Win, author Peter Gruber says the ability to tell a purposeful story that can truly be heard is increasingly in demand. “Moreover, in this age of acute economic uncertainty and rapid technological change, it’s not the 0’s and 1’s of the digital revolution, but rather the oohs and aahs of telling to win that offer the best chance of overcoming fear or compelling listeners to act on behalf of a worthy goal.”
No wonder some forward-thinking business schools like Notre Dame and DePaul University have added storytelling classes to their management curriculum. And companies such as Kimberly-Clark have held two-day seminars to teach its 13-step program for crafting a story. 3M is now using “strategic narratives” rather than bullet points. Procter & Gamble hired Hollywood movie directors to train senior executives on storytelling techniques.
So rather than fill your slide deck with emotionless data, tell a story that begins with a compelling challenge, then engage your audience with a struggle to overcome, and finally provide an eye-opening resolution that calls them to action. As a leader, the more you are able to incorporate good storytelling into your communication, the more effective you will be at convincing, inspiring and motivating your people.
The result of the recent presidential election means Donald Trump will become leader of the United States of America. However, I don’t recall him ever previously referred to as a business leader or any kind of leader for that matter.
While he is reportedly a successful businessman, he has absolutely no governing experience. Ironically, this was seen as an enormous strength rather than a weakness in this election. But business acumen doesn’t naturally translate into effective governing.
“Businesses tend to be dictatorships, where the edict of the CEO is carried out by an army of minions,” said Program Director A. G. Block of the University of California Center Sacramento. “Governance is a messy process where coalition-building is required and governors need to be good listeners willing to compromise. Goals also have social implications that business executives often do not consider when making business decisions. And their constituents in the business world—their stockholders—tend to be, for the most part, a homogenous group with one common goal: profits. As governor, the constituency is a varied mishmash with a variety of goals.”
The leader of the United States of America obviously cannot conduct himself like the CEO of a company. It is a unique leadership position that requires working collaboratively with others to protect and serve the citizens of the country. And our Founding Fathers ensured that the three branches of government provided the necessary checks and balances to keep a tyrant or dictator from taking over our democracy.
In a previous blog post I pointed out that Trump has demonstrated leadership qualities such as confidence, tenacity and negotiating skills. However, effective leaders also need to demonstrate integrity, humility, and the ability to inspire and motivate people. His performance in the presidential campaign provided few examples of integrity and humility.
His ability to inspire and motivate people certainly contributed to his success in bringing to the polls the disenfranchised voters who felt largely ignored by both parties. Yet it was his divisiveness that also brought out the worst in them rather than the best.
Though Trump can accomplish certain things without the help of Congress through Executive Actions, these can be easily overturned by his successor. This is exactly what he intends to do with many of President Obama’s Executive Actions. And this is no sustainable way to govern.
Important legislation can only be enacted with the help of Congress. And this requires collaboration. Though President Trump will have an easier time with an all-Republican Congress, he will no doubt face a great deal of opposition with many of the proposals he campaigned on from both Democrats and Republicans.
To be a successful President, he will need to collaborate with others rather than try to command and control them. He will need to learn the ability to compromise: to give a little in order to gain a little. Now that we are politically more divided as a country than ever before, this requires even greater collaboration skills.
It comes down to taking into account the importance of the tasks equally with the relationships. No one person in Washington will be able to accomplish big things without strong alliances with willing participants. And this requires the ability to collaborate successfully.
In their book Collaborative Leadership: How to succeed in an interconnected world, David Archer and Alex Cameron identified 10 key lessons for a successful collaborative leader.
1. Find the personal motive for collaborating
2. Find ways of simplifying complex situations for your people
3. Prepare for how you are going to handle conflict well in advance
4. Recognize that there are some people or organizations you just can’t partner with
5. Have the courage to act for the long term
6. Actively manage the tension between focusing on delivery and on building relationships
7. Invest in strong personal relationships at all levels
8. Inject energy, passion and drive into your leadership style
9. Have the confidence to share the credit generously
10. Continually develop your interpersonal skills, in particular: empathy, patience, tenacity, holding difficult conversations, and coalition building.
These lessons are just as important in running a country as they are in running a business. Reading over this list, I can’t help but think that many of these lessons do not necessarily come to mind with regard to Trump’s reputation as a businessman. If Donald Trump hopes to make progress on his campaign promises, he will need to find a way to collaborate effectively with the House and Senate.
Finally, leadership is not something one can be appointed to or elected to as it is something to be earned. True leaders are those who gain respect through their overall effectiveness combined with the way they lead their people. It is certainly about getting results, but it is also about the relationships that are inherently necessary in reaching those results. And those relationships require effective collaboration.
Whether you are trying to lose weight, run a marathon, secure a new job, or change your behavior to be more effective in the workplace, you are the primary driver of your success. As Henry Ford put it: If you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right!
I believe reaching any goal takes motivation, perseverance and discipline. A growth mindset is paramount to bring about goals that include behavioral change. And behavioral change requires the courage to step out of one’s comfort zone and deliberately practice new behaviors.
As a leadership coach, my passion is to help people reach their individual goals to become more effective leaders. These goals are often related to soft skills that require behavioral change.
Soft skills are the personal attributes that enable you to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. They show up in areas such as self-awareness, interpersonal communication, empathy, managing conflict, executive presence, and generally being a good team player. Your aptitude in each of these may not have hindered your ability to secure a job, but they may be holding you back from moving forward in your career.
Often you may be unaware that these soft skills are even a problem—until you see them continually surface in your annual reviews, 360-feedback or comments from your supervisor. When they do, and when you are ready to deal with them to move your career forward, it is worth creating goals and taking the necessary steps to achieve them.
The first step is to focus your attention on the specific goal you are looking to achieve and make it SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound). Once you have this, I recommend these 5 Steps:
Write it down. Unless you commit your SMART goal to paper or at least digital display and keep it in front of you, it will not remain top of mind. Find a way to remind yourself of your goal at the beginning of each day and you are more likely to make progress.
Develop a plan. Decide how you will go about reaching your new behavior by determining the specific steps to take along with a timeline. Record what resources and encouragement you will need to assist you along the way. And monitor your progress.
Enlist support. It is much easier to reach your goal with the assistance of others who can provide feedback regarding the way you show up with your new behavior. This could be your immediate supervisor, workplace colleague, or a coach. Regardless who you choose, be deliberate and actively seek their comments—good or bad.
Practice, practice, practice. Nothing will enable you to master your desired behavior more than deliberate practice. And forget the myth of 21 days to form a new habit. In the case of behavioral change, establishing new behavior is likely to take anywhere from 8 weeks to 8 months. Don’t let this discourage you, and accept that this is a process, which requires adequate time to really become habitual.
Continue learning. Demonstrating a true change in behavior requires that you continually make adjustments to what works and in what situations. Rarely will a specific behavioral skill work in every situation. Evaluate your performance regularly and make adjustments to reinforce or modify what you’re doing.
Recognize that as human beings, we are all perfectly imperfect. We are continually evolving and therefore shouldn’t expect to really ever be completed. This is part of lifelong learning and embraced that we are still growing—as opposed to dying.
With regard to behavioral change, you are the only one who can enable or impede your progress. Your beliefs, emotions and mindsets are your biggest assets or limitations. Once these are in your favor, create a SMART goal, follow the 5 Steps above, and you will attain your new behavior to move you forward in your career.
It’s nearing the end of summer and time for the kids to go back to school. September should also remind us that lifelong learning is vital in order for each of us to stay relevant at work and vibrant in life.
Whether you are just beginning your career, a mid-level manager or a seasoned leader, everyone should embrace lifelong learning—through formal continuing education, independent study, or deliberate behavioral adjustments. This will keep you moving forward at work and elsewhere.
A Fast Company article a couple years ago titled You’re Probably Making These Five Mistakes at Work pointed out the commonality found in people who may be limiting themselves in their careers. These mistakes are:
Handling upsets poorly
Failing to self-promote
Thinking “me” instead of “we”
Not asking for feedback
Declining to take on new roles
It’s interesting to note how each of these may seem insignificant or you may even feel it contradicts how to be successful in your particular workplace, but for me, they all resonate with wisdom. Each has an element of maturity in them. Each of them points to a particular skill set such as emotional intelligence, courage, humility or communication.
The good news is that all of them can be corrected with a little bit of practice and discipline. This correction is certainly not rocket science, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take significant attention and focus. It can be especially helpful to have a mentor, supervisor, HR partner or colleague to help keep you on track and measure your progress.
Meanwhile, Marcel Schwantes conducted a LinkedIn survey last year prior to writing an article for Inc. Magazine titled 8 Mistakes Managers Make, According to Their Employees. He compiled the list after posting the question: “What is the one mistake leaders make more frequently than others?” The results came in from around the world where he states many employees felt distressed and disengaged. These eight mistakes represent how they “suck the life out of their teams.”
Micromanaging
Leading from a position of power or ego
Not listening
Not valuing followers
Failing to grow themselves as leaders
Lacking boundaries
Not providing or receiving feedback
Not sharing leadership
A great deal of avoiding these mistakes begins with self-awareness and understanding how your behavior is impacting employees. Learning the “soft skills” mentioned above can also be especially helpful.
Sometimes a leader can receive candid 360-feedback that is highly instructive in highlighting concerns. Corrective action can then be taken either independently or with the help of an executive coach. Other times it may take the form of a more heavy-handed directive from another senior leader, superior or HR representative in order to elevate the importance of correcting these mistakes.
Regardless of how you learn about your own mistakes, the importance is in whether or not you choose to change. Changing one’s behavior is not necessarily easy as it takes effort and constant attention. Much can be learned through articles and books, mentoring and coaching, as well as trial and error with continual adjustments. The change may come about very slowly, but I am certain correcting these mistakes will help you in your career.
Learning begins with awareness and accepting that there is room for improvement. Once you can identify what may be holding you back from being most effective, it is time to identify an achievable goal towards the desired change and build a plan for achieving it.
Lifelong learning means you will never truly graduate, but only continue on your quest toward personal and professional excellence.
How do you size up a leader? Do you choose and accept him or her based on the perspective of your particular newsfeed? Or do you assess a leader based on who your friends and family respect? Does it depend on the size of the company or organization, or on the particular political party affiliation he or she happens to represent?
Each year Fortune magazine chooses the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and this is different than your typical list. You won’t find Bill Gates, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton on it. Instead you’ll see names like Christiana Figueres, Pope Francis, Aung San Suu Kyi and John Legend.
According to the article, “It isn’t enough to be accomplished, brilliant, or admirable. We recognize those who are inspiring others to act, to follow them on a worthy quest, and who have shown staying power.”
On the other hand, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos comes up as number one on this as well as many other such lists. Well-known leaders such as Tim Cook, Angela Merkel, Nick Saban and Marc Benioff are also included.
There are many reasons why we follow someone, but it seems that some type of benchmark would be helpful: a litmus test if you will for whether or not you will choose to admire, work for or vote for a particular person.
We live at a time when many of our business leaders are more focused on creating shareholder value than treating employees and customers respectfully. And while middle income workers’ wages have stagnated during the past 20 years, corporate boards continue to reward CEOs with salaries often 300 times the average of the rank and file worker.
The media continually refers to our government representatives as “leaders,” yet clearly most are not demonstrating leadership. And when congress (members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate combined) has only a 14 percent approval rating yet 95 percent of incumbents are re-elected, we the people are clearly not living up to our side of the responsibility of democracy.
Leaders You Admire
Think of the business or political leaders you most admire and for whom your respect has lasted over the years. These may be folks such as Herb Kelleher, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jack Welch, etc. What leadership qualities do they possess that have sustained your loyalty?
Now think of newer leaders you have recently chosen to follow. This could include Howard Schultz, Barack Obama, Sheryl Sandberg, etc. Do they possess similar leadership qualities or have you allowed your standards to be somewhat compromised? Is their leadership likely to stand up over time?
Litmus Test for Leaders
Before I attach my allegiance to a new leader, I like to evaluate him or her based on the following criteria:
Is there alignment with my own values? This seems like it should be the very baseline for whether or not I can willfully follow anyone.
Does he or she make me feel safe? Author Simon Sinek suggests this is a vitally important factor in whether someone can lead others effectively.
Does the individual inspire me? John Quincy Adams said “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
Does he or she demonstrate integrity? “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” — Warren Buffett
Has he or she created other leaders? Many mistakenly think leaders are only about gaining followers. “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself,” said Jack Welch. “When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
All of these are important when I consider whether a so-called leader is worthy of my respect and willingness to follow, work for or vote for.
In business or politics our leaders should continually be held to a high standard and one for which we hold them accountable. It is therefore incumbent upon us to demand more from those we choose to follow. Whatever your litmus test, it is important that you apply it before you accept your leaders. Then and only then can you “follow them on a worthy quest.”
Sometimes the most difficult part of being fully present and connected in the workplace requires simply speaking the truth: to yourself and to others.
Because we are often reluctant to be emotionally vulnerable by expressing our thoughts, wants and feelings in the workplace, we sacrifice our ability to fully connect and be most productive. This authenticity requires that we tell the truth, even when it is easier to stay silent.
Speaking Truth to Power
Truth telling is currently in short supply throughout our society, but perhaps most destructively in our workplace. It takes courage and is essential to becoming a strong leader.
This is not to suggest we wear our emotions on our sleeve, but it does mean we should express—in an appropriate and professional manner—when we feel angry, disappointed or treated unfairly. We should be fully honest with ourselves and others in service of improving all our workplace relationships.
In The Courage Solution: The Power of Truth Telling with Your Boss, Peers, and Team, author Mindy Mackenzie offers a formula on how to courageously speak the truth in the workplace. She offers practical steps that require vulnerability and courage to improve your impact on the job and increase your happiness. It basically comes down to the only thing you can reliably change or control in any situation: yourself.
Mackenzie, an HR and organizational development veteran in senior leadership roles at Beam, Inc., Campbell Soup Co., and Wal-Mart, recommends four key areas to focus on beginning with yourself, followed by your boss, peers and team.
Taking Ownership & Accountability
The techniques she offers require that you first take ownership and accountability for creating a work life AND personal life you love. This is a life that brings you increased fulfillment, greater sense of purpose, and more joy and energy to every day. It is your responsibility, and cannot be outsourced or provided by someone else. Accepting and owning this is vital.
“Changing the one thing you can change at will—your own habits, ways of thinking, attitudes and behaviors—will begin to positively transform your experience on the job and the results you achieve,” says Mackenzie. “But it’s not easy and will require you to be courageous. It will require you to tell the truth to yourself first. And that can be uncomfortable, but the upside is definitely worth it.”
Leading Your Boss
You also need to lead your boss, which might be the most daunting part of the solution as this may require a mindset you’re not used to having with your boss. Because you likely report to a boss who may be the most instrumental in your advancement, it is very important that you manage this relationship well. And Mackenzie goes a step further in suggesting you lead rather than manage your boss. This leading requires that you:
Intensely study your boss to get to know the human being behind the mask. Be curious and establish a dialogue where you can better know how they operate.
Understand the company you work for: the business you are in, how the firm makes money, who the end customer is and how what you do fits into the company’s strategy.
Get the boss-employee relationship basics right. Always strive to keep your boss informed and when you make a mistake, be sure to own up to it and provide a plan for fixing it.
Make a concerted effort to elevate your thinking to an enterprise-wide perspective. Frame your ideas with a focus beyond your own domain, which will make you appear more like a leader and your ideas more likely to be implemented.
Get in tune with your boss by knowing exactly what he or she is wrestling with on a weekly basis. By knowing what your boss is working on, you are more likely to be an asset while doing your own work.
Provide honest, positive praise and affirmation to your boss. Be on the lookout for behavior or traits you admire and express that to him or her. Like any good relationship, you need to regularly make positive deposits in your relationship bank account.
Be smart by preparing your boss for your pushback, challenges and disagreements. Use the LCS (Like, Concern, Suggest) method to frame your differences so your boss can hear them and positively respond to you.
Throughout all of these it is essential that you tell the truth. Without being truthful, you will undermine their effectiveness and may ultimately sabotage the relationship with your boss.
Showing up and telling the truth in the workplace is not easy. It is certainly not common. If you choose to do so, you will stand out in a good way. You will ultimately be respected. And you will become more of a leader.
Earlier this week a great leader and perhaps the best power forward to ever play in the NBA quietly retired from the game. In his typical understated fashion, Tim Duncan stepped away from the game he played with passion, consistency and unselfishness for 19 years. His presence will be missed beyond south Texas.
Unlike talents such as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and many others who receive so much of our collective attention, Duncan played in the relatively small market of San Antonio and didn’t seek out the spotlight he so much deserved.
Duncan’s five NBA titles (including three NBA Finals MVP awards) and two regular season MVP awards along with being selected a record 15 times on the NBA All-Defensive Team secured him as one of the best NBA players of all time. Duncan is also one of only three players to win the Wooden Award, NBA Rookie of the Year, NBA MVP, NBA Finals MVP and NBA All-Star Game MVP, joining Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.
Rather than taking advantage of all the praise for himself, he spread it around to his teammates and to San Antonio Spurs fans. In this age of Facebook “Likes,” Twitter followers, selfie sticks, and year-long victory tours (e.g., Kobe Bryant), Tim Duncan represents the kind of old-school leader we should be celebrating both on and off the court.
As Duncan explained recently, he took less money from bigger market teams in order to give the Spurs more ammunition to field successful teams. The money had “not ever been a deal for me.”
“Honest truth is I didn’t really know from year to year what people were making,” he said. “I think that was the best perspective to have.”
Tim Duncan’s leadership includes taking personal responsibility, leading by example and growing other leaders.
Leaders Take Responsibility
We live at a time when taking personal responsibility for our actions has become so rare that many people expect teachers and police to serve as parents. Tim Duncan is the kind of leader who demonstrates what Jim Collins described in his book Good to Great as one who looks out the window when things go right and in the mirror when things go wrong. Duncan held himself to a high standard and took responsibility (and blame) when it was warranted.
Leaders Lead by Example
Nothing builds up engagement among the ranks like the leader who is down in the trenches doing the grunt work. Tim Duncan was relentless in making his presence known on both ends of the court. Rather than seek out opportunities to make ESPN’s highlight reel, he did the things that helped his team win. While slam dunks are fun for fans to watch, what’s most important is winning the game and that was always Duncan’s focus.
Leaders Grow Other Leaders
Rather than be threatened by the arrival of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli, Duncan demonstrated servant leadership principles by giving away his power to enable the entire team to achieve greatness. Together they won 575 regular-season games and 126 career playoff games—both the most by any trio in NBA history. Despite the fact that the media promotes individual All-Star players who are the face of each NBA team, basketball is ultimately a team game where every member has a role to play and how well they work together determines whether they win or lose.
When Duncan was a young boy, his mother taught his sisters and him the nursery rhyme: “Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest/Until your Good is Better, and your Better is your Best.” He cited his mother as his inspiration and the nursery rhyme as his personal motto. This is how he was able to achieve personal greatness.
Ultimately, what Tim Duncan demonstrated as a leader was to put his team above himself. In the same way a corporate executive should put the needs of employees, customers and shareholders above his or her personal needs (and I believe they should be in that particular order), too often executives begin with themselves and work backwards.
Whether you’re leading a company or a basketball team, the best leadership should be measured on overall performance of the organization. Tim Duncan’s leadership demonstrated consistency, competency and quality execution. He should be a model for all of us.
Perhaps Duncan put it best when he summed up his career: “It was just about being in the right situation with the right bunch of guys and getting it done.”
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/24887901@N04/14261831767″>2014 NBA Champions</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Admitting you don’t know the answer. Apologizing when you’ve made a mistake. Putting yourself in another person’s shoes. Not speaking poorly about someone behind their back.
These are things we learned as children and know we should practice as adults, yet because many of us don’t, our workplaces are unhealthy and prevent us from being more productive. Traits like empathy, transparency and clear communication are often missing and make for a corrosive work environment where office politics has become an accepted standard element of corporate life.
In a recent Harvard Business Journal article How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics, author Jay Parikh describes that from the very beginning of the social media juggernaut, they wanted to be more thoughtful in all their interactions to avoid letting “office maneuvering poison work life.”
Parikh, global head of engineering and infrastructure, offers five tactics Facebook discovered to keep their culture healthy and productive. These all include elements of trust, transparency, curiosity, and are focused on the soft skills so vital to effective workplaces.
“We equip our employees with the communication skills needed to be empathetic and to solve these issues in constructive ways,” writes Parikh.
Some examples of ways Facebook reportedly encourages employees to avoid the trappings of office politics include:
Make “escalation” legal so skip-level meetings are actually encouraged to ensure everyone is on the same page. This has enabled them to help uncover areas to improve, build greater engagement and establish cross-team collaboration among other things.
In the hiring process, interviewers need to document feedback on the candidate that everyone on the hiring team can see only after they have submitted feedback of their own. This keeps everyone accountable and prevents personal bias in decision-making.
Performance evaluations include twice annual 360-degree reviews to ensure assessments are fair and prevent favoritism or unwarranted punishment to take hold. HR partners have access to the information so no one person can inhibit another’s potential within the company.
When an employee does claim politics is to blame for a decision, their manager or other leader seeks clarification to get at the root of the concern. By reducing assumptions, everyone is encouraged to be accountable and to fully understand the other’s perspective. Oftentimes, politics isn’t the cause so much as misunderstanding.
All of these examples in theory can be helpful in building a more engaging, productive and enjoyable place to work. If Facebook is truly practicing these behaviors, I suspect this is an important reason for their rapid growth as well as their ability to retain and motivate high-caliber employees.
More organizations should encourage practicing behaviors that include empathy, transparency, curiosity and clear communication. When all members of the leadership team are actively embodying and demonstrating these behaviors, it sends a strong message that it is more than an external public relations message and integral to the values that the company stands for.
Leaders who courageously embrace attributes to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people will send a strong and clear message on what behaviors are rewarded throughout the company. Then and only then will other employees see the wisdom in following along.
And the result will create a healthier workplace where office politics don’t impede optimal productivity and all employees feel more engaged.
How often do you struggle to get people to buy what you’re selling?
I’m not suggesting you are a sales person, per se. However, all of us are selling something whether it’s seeking the boss’s permission to proceed on a project, persuading a co-worker to do something in a particular way, convincing your spouse to vacation in a certain location, or cajoling the kids to do their homework and clean their rooms.
This form of persuasion takes place in each of our lives every single day, and some of us are more successful at it than others.
In this age of message bombardment, it’s important to recognize that people selectively tune out the noise in order to hear what’s important to them. Because they are inundated with both wanted and unwanted to information, they fortify themselves to listen selectively.
So given this resistance, how do you get your message across?
Persuasion Cycle
In Mark Goulston’s book, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, he explains the importance of successful communication through the Persuasion Cycle, illustrated above. Goulston says all persuasion moves through the steps of this cycle and therefore it’s important to to speak to people in a manner that moves them from:
Resisting to Listening
Listening to Considering
Considering to Willing to Do
Willing to Do to Doing
Doing to Glad They Did and Continue Doing
The secret to getting through to anyone is by having them buy in. This occurs only when you are able to get people to stop “resisting” to “listening” to “considering” what you are saying.
“Ironically, the key to gaining ‘buy-in’ and then moving people through the rest of the cycle is not what you tell them, but what you get them to tell you—and what happens in their minds in the process,” says Goulston.
As the title to his book implies, listening is a huge part of successfully persuading others. And effective listening requires seeking to understand before being understood as Stephen R. Covey described in his seminal book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
It also requires hearing what is unspoken yet conveyed through tone of voice, eye contact and other body language. This requires you to be curious, and using all of your senses to truly tune into the other person.
Listen Better by Asking Right Questions
Getting people to reveal their resistance involves not only listening, but asking the right questions. No matter how many facts and details you share about your perspective, until you ask the right questions to uncover resistance you will fall on deaf ears. And learning to ask good questions is perhaps the most important leadership tool you can master.
You can also help persuade others by exercising your empathy muscle to make the other person feel heard. The gift of being heard is all too rare and goes a long way towards successfully connecting with other people. When they feel heard, they are much more willing to open up and reveal what’s most important to them.
Though most of us will say we are good listeners, the reality is we are not. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we will admit that instead of actively listening, we are distracted or thinking about what to say next. This is counterproductive to moving through the Persuasion Cycle.
If you really want to enhance your ability to persuade others to buy what you’re selling, follow the steps in the Persuasion Cycle and improve your ability to truly listen.
The current tenor of the Republican presidential campaign has got me thinking about the lack of compassion expressed by our so-called leaders. It wasn’t that long ago when George W. Bush campaigned using the phrase “compassionate conservatism,” though you might argue he never really governed that way.
For some reason the term compassion has become divisive and reserved for discussion of those who have fallen through the safety net and only the “truly needy.” It’s as if compassion should be conveyed only as a last resort and for a small minority of us. The fact is we all need compassion at some time and we should all feel compassion for others when they need it.
“Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism,” said Hubert H. Humphrey. I hope we haven’t gotten to the point where there’s no room for compassion in our capitalism.
Whether in politics or business, leaders who demonstrate compassion are more likely to connect with and gain lasting followers.
Feeling compassion in the workplace means staying in touch with your own feelings as well as those of others, which can result in more accurately understanding and navigating all your workplace relationships. Compassion is a leadership trait that should be demonstrated by leaders at every level within an organization.
That’s because research has shown that those who experience compassion in the workplace feel more positive emotions and are more committed to the organization. When bad news is delivered compassionately, workers are more likely to remain supportive of the organization. And when you act with compassion at work, you can increase your satisfaction and lower your overall stress.
Compassionate leaders put people before procedures, they courageously say what they feel, and they lead with sincere and heartfelt consideration for others.
Perhaps the most important tool of compassion is empathy, which is the ability to understand what someone else experiences and reflect that understanding back to them. Empathy is also a vital component of what it means to be emotionally intelligent.
According to Brené Brown, Ph.D., author of Rising Strong, the prerequisite for real empathy is compassion. You can’t respond to someone empathetically unless you are willing to be present to their pain, which requires compassion.
“It’s important to note here that empathy is understanding what someone is feeling, not feeling it for them,” writes Brown. “If someone is feeling lonely, empathy doesn’t require us to feel lonely, too, only to reach back into our own experience with loneliness so we can understand and connect.”
But don’t confuse empathy for sympathy. As Brown further explains, when someone says, “I feel sorry for you” or “That must be terrible,” they are standing at a safe distance. Rather than conveying the powerful “me too” of empathy, sympathy communicates “not me,” and then adds, “But I do feel for you.” This does not have nearly the impact empathy provides.
For you to demonstrate empathy inside an organization, you must have the foundation of compassion.
Being compassionate doesn’t mean taking on and solving other people’s problems. Nor does it mean you have to agree with the actions that got the individual into a particular situation. And being compassionate doesn’t mean you don’t hold the individual accountable.
What compassion does mean is noticing another person’s suffering, connecting with him or her both cognitively and emotionally, and then responding in a caring and proactive fashion. You can be compassionate by agreeing to disagree, yet still hold the person accountable.
In this way your compassion helps the individual, the organization and yourself.
I’d like to think we’re seeing an increase in compassionate business leaders who sincerely value the welfare of their employees, customers and surrounding community. This kind of leadership will lead to more engaged employees, satisfied customers, a healthier community and ultimately greater shareholder return.
In my work as a leadership coach I regularly encounter senior managers and directors who desire to become leaders, but many fail to understand that the leap is much more than a title, salary and corner office.
Leadership isn’t so much appointed as it is earned through your management track record and, perhaps just as importantly, the soft skills you demonstrate.
Soft skills include the ability to communicate clearly and effectively, inspire people to deliver their best, organizational savvy, courage to make hard decisions, and the ability to admit you don’t have all the answers. This last one means demonstrating humility and often runs counter to what we expect in our leaders.
“In a culture of scarcity and perfectionism, asking for help can be shaming if we’re not raised to understand how seeking help is human and foundational to connection,” writes author and researcher Brené Brown in her book Rising Strong. “But the truth is that no amount of money, influence, resources, or determination will change our physical, emotional, and spiritual dependence on others.”
None of us have all the answers and the strongest leaders are those who not only acknowledge this to themselves, but demonstrate it to others. As much as we may be seeking a single person to have all the answers and take care of everything, the reality is no one person can do this.
However, we live in a culture that presents it that way. Think about sports and how despite the need for total team effort, the media presents Payton Manning and the Denver Broncos or Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers. NBA match-ups are promoted as LeBron James and the Cavaliers versus Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors.
Taking nothing away from the leadership these talented athletes demonstrate, we discount and denigrate the efforts of those around them who contribute to victories. We give too much credit to the individual athletes when they succeed and lay on too much blame when they fail.
In the more serious arena of politics, this lack of humility and the leader’s inability to rely upon others can be much more troubling. When a leader claims he or she has all the answers, beware because this can mean a lack of self-awareness, extreme egotism, narcissism and will likely lead to destructive and even catastrophic decisions.
When Republican presidential front-running candidate Donald Trump was recently asked by host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he would rely on for help with foreign policy, he said:
“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain. I’ve said a lot of things … I speak to a lot of people, but my primary consultant is myself, and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”
Despite no experience in domestic or foreign policy, Trump is essentially saying we should take him on faith. He says he’s smart and he can figure it out. In this bizarre political season, vetting potential leaders of the free world should demand more than this.
In the corporate setting, those leading from a cool and professional distance are unable to make sound decisions because, like all of us, they have blind spots and areas where they are simply deficient. When these leaders refuse to ask for help they risk alienating their people and make bad decisions.
The difficulty with asking for help is because it is emotionally risky and may expose our uncertainty. This is, however, the exact vulnerability necessary for us to fully connect with others. Without the courage to risk opening up and being seen, there can be no connection.
Just the other day I spoke with a leader who described the most powerful and important day in his career. It was at an off-site where they were discussing the importance of trust. When it was brought up that there was a trust problem in the organization, he invited feedback as to whether he was someone who could be trusted. The answer came back negative.
Without becoming defensive, he asked for examples of why this was the case, and in front of the entire group he listened with an open mind and open heart. He invited follow up conversations with each of the individuals who spoke up in order to learn from them and to express his perspective. Later he came to find not only did these individual relationships improve, but so did trust, his satisfaction at work and his overall growth as a leader, culminating with a promotion.
The ability to courageously expose our vulnerability and ask for help is the very thing that builds our leadership capacity. Demonstrating humility that runs counter to the image we’re trying to live up to facilitates an important connection to those we want as followers.
Expecting leaders to be anything other than emotionally vulnerable and imperfect human beings is detrimental to our institutions and our very livelihood. Instead, let leaders risk exposing their ignorance in order to raise their competence and connection with those we want them to lead.
Happy Employee Appreciation Day! It’s now the third month of the new year and if you have not yet recognized the impact and value of your employees, do something about it today.
This annual holiday—celebrated the first Friday in March—is meant to remind companies to thank employees for their hard work and effort throughout the year. It is also meant to strengthen the bond between employer and employee.
Perhaps we need Employee Appreciation Day now more than ever because a recent survey found that 40 percent of employees say they had not been recognized at all in the past year. Recognizing employees is probably the most important step in raising employee engagement because it makes them feel more proud and happy with their jobs.
This is according to a new survey conducted by Globoforce last November. The survey, composed of 828 randomly-selected fully employed persons in the United States (aged 18 or older), had a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points at a 95 percent level of confidence.
They also found that two-thirds of workers who were recognized in the last month felt more than twice as engaged at work than those employees who had not been recognized.
This strong correlation between high engagement and recognition means employees who are well-recognized have more drive and determination, better working relationships, improved personal standing and stronger connections to their company.
As I wrote about previously, organizations should give thanks to their employees through a well designed, fully implemented and on-going social recognition program. It’s good for engagement, retention and the bottom-line.
And while cash or gift cards are easy and generally appreciated at least in the short term, they don’t deliver the more important long term results. You can show appreciation to employees in many ways, but be sure it is sincerely presented and meaningful to the individual.
Here are some suggestions:
Be Specific Rather than simply “great job on that report,” you might say, for example, “I really appreciate that you included the metrics on XYZ in order to emphasize the impact our products will have on the client’s account.” The more you can tie your praise directly to the individual’s specific contribution, the more impact your appreciation will have.
Consider Giving Time Perhaps our most precious commodity today is time. When possible, give your employee the gift of taking off the afternoon, a day, or several days to pursue a hobby, spend time with loved ones, or simply to rest and recharge.
Encourage Employees to Appreciate Each Other Don’t relegate showing appreciation only to the boss. With apps like YouEarnedIt, Bonusly or TINYpulse, you can enable all employees to regularly provide kudos to each other in real time. This will create a more positive and healthy workplace where everyone participates in providing and receiving appreciation.
Express Gratitude Sometimes it is not the tangible reward that makes us feel appreciated, but the simple verbal or written expression of thanks. And if you tell someone how much you appreciate them, you will likely find that you feel better having done so. That’s because showing gratitude acts like a hug: in the same way you can’t hug someone without receiving a hug in return, expressing gratitude works similarly.
Feelings associated with gratitude impact the dopamine in your brain, which functions as a reward neurotransmitter. Like a drug, experiencing gratitude results in a dopamine hit that makes you feel better.
This gratitude creates positive feelings, good memories, higher self-esteem, and a more relaxed and optimistic mindset. When taken together, these emotions can then create a “pay it forward” and “we’re all in this together” mentality throughout the workplace.
Gratitude makes people feel appreciated, it doesn’t cost anything, and it doesn’t require any special training to implement. All it takes is sincerity and a willingness to show appreciation to others.
Showing appreciation and gratitude for employees creates a better working environment, promotes more engagement and delivers better bottom-line results.
Millennials now represent the largest generation in the U.S. workforce. These digital natives are often described as confident and tolerant as well as entitled and narcissistic. What does this mean in terms of their effectiveness as managers in the workplace?
Stereotypes of the 54 million working Millennials include: lack of experience, immaturity, no long-term vision, too focused on their next career step, and they struggle with people skills. These were no doubt similar to the stereotypes associated with Generation X, Baby Boomers and even Traditionalists when they first entered the workforce.
People born into each generation are roughly sorted as: Traditionalists or Silent Generation (1927-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1963), Generation X (1964-1979) and Millennials or Generation Y (1980-1999). The values and work ethic of each can vary immensely.
Every generation seems to have an opinion about those who follow or preceded them. Baby Boomers were born at a time when the economy was booming after World War II. No surprise then that those of Generation X often describe Baby Boomers as optimistic and workaholics. And Boomers describe Gen Xers as skeptical and self-reliant.
Typically, the previous generation believes the up and coming generation has it so much easier than they did, though it could be argued just the opposite.
The reality is that the members of each generation continue to evolve both as individuals and as a group. And all the generations need to learn to coexist—rather than discount each others’ differences, find ways to complement these unique perspectives.
Like the generations that preceded them, Millennials face challenges in being seen as competent managers of other people. In their book Millennials Who Manage, Chip Espinoza and Joel Schwarzbart conducted research to determine the biggest challenges Millennials face in the workplace. These challenges are listed from most to least frequently mentioned.
Lack of experience
Not being taken seriously
Not getting respect
Being perceived as “entitled”
Lack of patience
Getting helpful feedback
Understanding expectations
Miscommunication with older workers
Rigid processes
Proving value
Understanding corporate culture
Though this is a long list, it hasn’t prohibited Millennials from becoming competent workers and effective managers. In fact, as the Traditionalist and Baby Boomer generations move further into retirement, Millennials will be taking on more and more management opportunities.
So what can Millennials do to further overcome these challenges and become better at managing people older and more experienced than themselves?
Espinoza and Schwarzbart provide a number of recommendations. Though I can see all of these being useful in any management scenario, they may be especially suitable for Millennials managing workers who are older and more experienced. When managing workers older than themselves, Millennials should:
Know What They Don’t Like Demotivating factors are not necessarily the opposite of motivating factors. For example, a demotivating factor could be a manager who micromanages others, which may very well trump a number of motivating factors meant to encourage engagement.
Understand What Does Motivate Them
Though it’s dangerous to link everyone within a certain generational category, keep in mind that what motivates one employee is not true for all others. For instance, a Gen X employee may more likely have an independent streak and be not nearly as interested in team building events as Baby Boomers or Millennials.
Seek Their Input, Learn from Them, and Encourage Mentoring
The lack of experience in Millennial managers can be offset somewhat by showing reverence to the wisdom of other generations. This doesn’t mean capitulating authority as the boss, but simply encouraging a dialogue for you to learn and others to feel respected and valued in their respective roles.
Communicate
An open channel for communication is essential in any successful business. Though Millennials may seek more frequent feedback than other generations, it is important to maintain a regular practice of give and take rather than await the dreaded and oftentimes detrimental annual performance review.
Be a Leader, but Don’t Overdo the “Boss” Thing
Just because you have the job title, doesn’t mean you can bully others or force your employees to do their work effectively. True leadership is your ability to inspire and influence others so people you manage choose to follow your direction.
A multigenerational workplace has many challenges, and yet every generation seems to be especially challenged by both effectively listening and sharing information. Perhaps these two areas are where the focus for growth and learning can be best accomplished.
And when you think about listening and sharing information, it’s clear that trust is inherent in both. Perhaps building trust among the generations will see the widest and most effective intervention for helping them all to work together better.
As a Millennial manager, you have the opportunity to effectively lead your team by making a concerted effort to foster trusting relationships where listening and sharing information is both modeled and rewarded. Appeal to all the generations and be the change agent to lead us in the 21st Century.
Can a narcissist be a good leader? This is the question that comes up for me when I contemplate the possibility of a President Trump.
The Mayo Clinic defines narcissistic personality disorder as “a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others.” Characteristics include arrogance, dominance and hostility.
According to psychologist and Harvard professor Howard Gardener, Donald Trump is a “textbook” narcissist. And while healthy narcissism can be valuable in leaders, unhealthy narcissism can be extremely destructive.
Though many famous productive and healthy narcissists come to mind in the corporate world (e.g., Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Larry Ellison), it’s a bit more difficult to think of narcissistic world leaders that aren’t viewed as dictators (e.g., Muammar Qaddafi, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot.)
However, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton all displayed many healthy narcissistic qualities while in power. These healthy narcissistic qualities include: self confidence that is in line with reality, a genuine concern for others and their ideas, and the ability to follow through on plans based on their values.
Conversely, unhealthy narcissistic qualities include: self-confidence that is grandiose, devaluing and exploiting others without remorse, and an inability to follow a consistent path because it is not grounded in values.
Healthy and productive narcissists can be visionaries with creative strategies, who are able to find meaning in the challenges of a changing world. Narcissists are not only risk takers, but also charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric.
Sigmund Freud named narcissism after the mythical figure Narcissus, who died because of his pathological preoccupation with himself. Freud said that narcissists are emotionally isolated and highly distrustful. They are typically overly sensitive to criticism, poor listeners and—though emotionally clever—they tend towards exploitation rather than empathy.
“Companies need leaders who do not try to anticipate the future so much as create it,” wrote Michael Maccoby in a 2004 Harvard Business Review article titled Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons. “But narcissistic leaders—even the most productive of them—can self-destruct and lead their organizations terribly astray. For companies whose narcissistic leaders recognize their limitations, these will be the best of times. For other companies, these could turn out to be the worst.”
Narcissists can turn unproductive when, due to their lack of self-awareness and restraint, they become unrealistic dreamers, says Maccoby. They nurture grand schemes and harbor the illusion where only circumstances or enemies are blocking their success.
They listen only for the kind of information they are seeking. They don’t learn from others, nor do they like to teach. Instead, they indoctrinate others and make speeches. Rather than search for the best solutions among others, they dominate meetings with their own agenda.
Paradoxically, they are extraordinarily sensitive yet they avoid emotions. And in this age of teamwork and collaboration, the narcissistic leader is emotionally isolated.
Many narcissistic leaders become more confident as they increase the number of followers, and very often this leads to flagrant risk-taking, which inevitably results in their downfall. See Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.
For the narcissistic CEO, Maccoby recommends three ways to avoid the traps of their own personality. Let’s look at these and how they might apply to Trump in a governing setting.
Find a trusted sidekick. This is someone who can keep the narcissist grounded. Don Quixote had Sancho Panza just as Bill Gates had Steve Ballmer. Would Donald Trump choose a Vice President or Chief of Staff who could provide adequate counsel to avoid disaster? I have not yet heard or read that he has such a person at his side now.
Indoctrinate the organization. The narcissistic leader wants all subordinates to think the way he or she thinks. Jack Welch had a personal ideology he indoctrinated into GE managers through speeches, memos and confrontations. Rather than create a dialogue, he made pronouncements. Donald Trump may have great difficulty doing this given the divisiveness of a divided congress, not to mention the need for diplomacy on the world stage.
Get into analysis. Though a narcissistic leader is more interested in controlling others than in knowing and disciplining him or herself, this could prove especially useful to uncover and correct vital character flaws. The best narcissistic corporate leaders will do this to become more self-aware and learn humility. Donald Trump, like any politician, would likely hide this even if he were courageous enough to take it on.
Perhaps what at least partially explains Donald Trump’s current lead in the polls is that he has convinced many Republican voters that they should be very afraid because these are chaotic times. Fearful chaotic times are when narcissists most often thrive.
Whether in a corporate or government setting, healthy productive narcissistic leaders can go a long way towards rallying support needed in order to bring about sustainable change and progress. It typically requires gaining some self-awareness and becoming more grounded.
However, unhealthy unproductive narcissistic leaders in either setting can bring about greater divisiveness, reckless planning and execution, and a total lack of concern for others. This type of narcissistic leader would prove detrimental to any company or country.
“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.” –Mulla Nasruddin, 13th Century Sufi sage/fool
Success in business today requires many things. Perhaps most importantly, organizations need to embrace learning. And both the employer and the employee have responsibilities in this learning.
Employers should do what they can to engage employees and keep them intrinsically motivated to learn. And this learning must include the ability to be implemented otherwise it undermines the employee’s motivation as well as limits organizational improvement.
At the same time, employees should adopt a growth mindset so they continually achieve and learn as they navigate their careers. This means taking on new challenges, expanding their skills, and broadening their area of expertise. It also means challenging the status quo.
Here are two scenarios:
Bob discovers the new product his company is launching has a fatal flaw that may undermine its success in the marketplace. He double-checks his research and concludes it is correct. His company however discourages naysayers and, despite his certainty, Bob is concerned that speaking up will be detrimental to his career. He stays silent, the product flops, yet Bob’s career growth is preserved.
Nancy discovers the new project her company is rolling out will miss its target completion date. She double-checks her research and concludes it is correct. Because she works for a learning organization that encourages direct feedback, Nancy presents her findings, the project is given additional resources to complete on time, and it is a resounding success. Nancy is rewarded with a promotion and celebrated throughout the company.
Which company do you work for? Are you Bob or are you Nancy?
Organizations should encourage employees to challenge assumptions, speak directly about the “elephant in the room,” and take calculated risks when it’s right for the business. This theory must go beyond mere words in an employee handbook and extend into actual practice for how things get done inside the organization.
On his way to inventing the light bulb, Thomas Edison reportedly said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” That is a healthy perspective on reaching success and how learning is paramount.
The best companies perform a post-mortem on projects and products with the purpose of pointing out and learning from what went well and not so well. Too often, however, the lessons of what went wrong are not adequately documented and communicated, so the missteps are likely repeated.
Economists too often see people as highly rational in their decision-making and don’t take into account the irrationality of human beings, says Richard Thaler, professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in his book Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics.
“It is time for everyone—from bureaucrats to teachers to corporate leaders—to recognize that they live in world of Humans and to adopt the same data-driven approach to their jobs and lives that good scientists use.”
Here are some basic lessons in behavioral science Thaler suggests can make this possible in the corporate world. Observe, collect data and speak up.
Observe – This means seeing the world not as you wish it be, but as it really is. The first step to overturning conventional wisdom, when conventional wisdom is wrong, is to look at the world around you as it is.
Collect Data – People become overconfident because they never bother to document their past track record of wrong predictions, and then make things worse by falling victim to confirmation bias—they look only for evidence that confirms their preconceived hypotheses. The only protection against overconfidence is to systematically collect data, especially data that can prove you wrong. This is what proves especially difficult because we are so devoted to our hypothesis.
Speak Up – Many organizational errors could be prevented if someone is willing to tell the boss something is wrong. Thaler cites the tragic 1977 runway crash of a KLM flight because the second officer was too timid to speak up to the pilot, his boss. Culture, professional courtesy, and most of all fear keep people from challenging the boss, even when they know the boss is wrong.
“But we cannot expect people to take risks, by speaking up or in other ways, if by so doing they will get fired,” says Thaler. “Good leaders must create environments in which employees feel that making evidence-based decisions will always be rewarded, no matter what outcome occurs.”
In Thaler’s ideal organizational environment, everyone is encouraged to observe, collect data, and speak up. And the bosses who create such environments risk only a few bruises to their egos, which is a small price to pay for increasing the flow of new ideas and decreasing the risk of disasters.
It comes down to more humility in leaders and more courage in employees. When both are present, organizations can learn from their experiences and become more successful. And organizations should encourage more Nancys and fewer Bobs.
In the same way Apartheid came to define South Africa and Nazism defined Germany during and directly after World War II, slavery has continued to define and denigrate the promise of the United States of America.
It is our national shame and I believe it is time for you to address it.
More than 150 years since Juneteenth when the last of the American slaves were set free and 50 years since the civil rights movement, one of our biggest challenges remains equal rights, fairness and race relations.
The bestselling book and National Book Award finalist Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a powerful work that has stirred up conversations that many Americans are uncomfortable having. Yet we can’t have meaningful dialogue about race without getting a bit uncomfortable. And that’s okay because we will come out better once we respectfully engage in it.
In this blog I typically write about workplace communication, organization development and overall leadership. An important element of leadership is admitting mistakes and errors—even those that occurred before us—and speaking up and addressing these difficult yet undeniable truths.
The integrity you demonstrate here would stand out as a positive model against so many recent examples of corporate leaders (e.g., Volkswagen and Exxon) choosing not to do the right thing.
As the leader of the free world entering your final year in office, I can think of no better person or time for taking this bold and important step.
On behalf of the American people, it is time for you to apologize to all African-Americans for the injustice that slavery was to their ancestors. This is not a new idea, but it is one you should strongly consider at this time of fractured race relations in America.
Last summer, on the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth, Timothy Egan wrote an editorial in The New York Times suggesting Obama should “apologize for the land of the free being, at one time, the largest slaveholding nation on earth.” Egan stated that conservatives might scoff at this saying you shouldn’t play the race card and liberals may complain that an apology doesn’t go far enough without reparations. You should do it nevertheless.
As Egan correctly pointed out the British, the Vatican, the Germans and the South Africans all issued formal apologies for their official cruelties, and in each case this had a cleansing and liberating effect. Though the U.S. Congress apologized to African-Americans for slavery in 2009, it did not have the wide reaching significance as would such a statement coming from you as President.
This is the right time and you are the right person to do this. And while I understand you may have reservations, let me address some of them here:
What good will it do? By taking accountability for our forefathers’ actions, we as a nation can begin to heal the shame we continue to experience. Many will deny any shame at all, but it is undeniable when you consider the current state of race relations in our country. And if we compare our country’s actions with our standards for which we profess (e.g., that all men are created equal, etc.), we are not in congruence and this weighs heavily on our national consciousness as well as who we are as a people. Accepting responsibility for slavery means we own up to this grave mistake and learn from it so we can live together more peacefully.
Why do this now? You were elected as our first African-American President and since we have witnessed the tragic deaths of so many young black people like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, stirring the #BlackLivesMatter movement. It is time to act. No one is better positioned, more articulate, and with the necessary credibility to offer such an apology. It is time because unlike those who may succeed you, only Senator Bernie Sanders stated that such a statement is even necessary. You doing this—perhaps strategically between next November’s election and the time you leave office—will help heal our national wound.
What about potential repercussions? As a former law professor, I’m sure your biggest concern is that making such an apology will open the government up to being sued. This is a valid concern and therefore the apology requires careful language that admits our forefathers’ error as well as our past, present and future efforts to make things right. Not you or any currently living American is directly responsible for slavery, but we must all acknowledge and right the mistakes of those who preceded us.
Some may believe that without reparations of some kind, an apology is not enough. However, Coates and others have pointed out that reparations are not necessarily about remuneration, but about unequivocally acknowledging the wrongs the state has inflicted on black people. It is about accepting responsibility and apologizing.
This apology will admit the error of our collective past and, most importantly, commit to working together to move forward. It is about changing a fixed mindset rather than making restitution.
As the son of a Kenyan-born father and Kansas-born mother, you are uniquely qualified and positioned to help heal the wounds of American slavery. Make this part of your Presidential legacy and move America forward by healing the shame of our collective past.
Amazon’s Jeffery Bezos is no longer at the top of the Best-Performing CEOs in the World ranking, even though his company just posted an unexpected profit and added $25 billion to its market capitalization.
The CEO at the top of the list is now Lars Rebien Sørensen of Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company. If he were ranked entirely on financial performance alone, Sørensen would still earn a respectable sixth. However, when you include the company’s decision to offer a steep discount for insulin to people in developing countries, transparent and limited lobbying practices, and responsible policy on animal testing, Sørensen shoots to the top.
A recent Harvard Business Reviewarticle outlined the reasoning for this new metric in measuring the value of a CEO above and beyond financial performance. The ranking does not dismiss bottom-line performance as 80% of the score is based on shareholder return and market capitalization. However, the researchers wanted to include other important aspects of leadership that include the longer term by including environmental, social and overall governance or ESG.
“Corporate social responsibility is nothing but maximizing the value of your company over a long period,” says Sørensen in the HBR article. “In the long term, social and environmental issues become financial issues.”
According to HBR, the rationalization for the new metric is that in this “era of big data and greater transparency, consumers and investors increasingly want to understand a company’s culture and values.” While previous rankings were based entirely on stock market numbers, the researchers at HBR say they didn’t reflect a company’s reputation and aspects of leadership beyond market performance.
The researchers track and analyze each CEO’s performance from the first day of his or her tenure with the goal to create a list that goes beyond recent quarterly or annual results and evaluates long-term performance.
The new metric for this rating is a very good thing as consumers and shareholders already do and will continue to make choices that align with their own personal values. Leaders should take note and invest, develop and market products and services that are about more than profits alone.
In order to measure the ESG, they used calculations of Sustainalytics, a leading provider of environmental, social and governance research and analytics. They then applied the weight of long-term financial results at 80% and ESG performance at 20%.
Those better-known and often larger than life leaders elevated by the press are not necessarily the best performing. Here’s the rest of the top ten to make the list:
John Chambers, Cisco Systems
Pablo Isla, Inditex
Elmar Degenhart, Continental
Martin Sorrell, WPP
Stephen Luczo, Seagate Technology
Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Telenor
George Scangos, Biogen
Michael Wolf, Swedbank
Fujio Mitarai, Canon
More familiar names further down the list include: 12. Howard Schultz (Starbucks), 38. Blake Nordstrom (Nordstom), 46. Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com), and 75. Frederick Smith (FedEx). Meanwhile, Amazon’s Bezos dropped all the way to 87 based on the new criteria.
Leadership is, of course, more than financial performance. The best CEOs are knowledgeable and skilled individuals, effective team members, competent managers, and, of course, effective leaders. But the very best have a combination of personal humility and professional will. These are what Jim Collins calls Level 5 Executives.
In his classic book Good to Great, Collins found that every one of the good-to-great companies he studied had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years. These Level 5 leaders are a study in contrast: modest and willful, humble and fearless. They look out the window when things are going right and in the mirror when things are going wrong. Think Abraham Lincoln; not Donald Trump.
REI’s recent decision to close all of their 143 retail stores on the busiest shopping day of the year so their employees can get out to enjoy the outdoors is an example of a company living its values.
“For 76 years, our co-op has been dedicated to one thing and one thing only: a life outdoors,” said REI CEO Jerry Stritzke in a statement. “We believe that being outside makes our lives better. And Black Friday is the perfect time to remind ourselves of this essential truth.”
It’s no wonder REI has earned a spot on Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” every year since they began compiling the list in 1998.
What about your company? Is there a match between your corporate values and the actions taken by your leader? Can your leader earn a spot on the Best-Performing CEOs in the World list because they excel not only at financial performance, but in social, environmental and governance as well?
Companies used to engage executive coaches to help fix toxic behavior demonstrated by their top leaders. Today, most coaching is instead deployed in order to develop the capabilities of high-potential performers, including directors and senior managers. Coaching is no longer seen as an aspirin, but as a vitamin.
An ever-increasing pace of change requires leaders to quickly develop while on the job. Professional development programs or training that take the leader out of the organization to focus on general theories rather than the immediate day-to-day challenges are no longer sufficient.
Using 360-degree feedback is a valuable way to gather data and report back to the individual leader. This feedback has been found to stick better when the leader works with an unbiased external professional to create sustained progress based on that feedback.
Coaching provides a way to use the feedback as a springboard to formulate actionable S.M.A.R.T. goals and an individual development plan to bring about sustained behavioral change. Working in close partnership with a coach, the leader can then be given direction and support as well as be held accountable to meeting these goals.
There are now nearly 50,000 professional coaches worldwide representing about $2 Billion in revenue, according to a 2012 ICF Global Coaching Study.
Coaching is no longer limited to C-suite executives in big companies as those of all size and type now realize the importance of raising leadership capacities of high performers throughout the organization.
Many reasons exist for hiring an executive coach, including:
Uncover blind spots
Improve leadership presence
Improve communication skills
Improve interpersonal skills
Make sustained behavioral changes
Assist with a new leadership role
Help navigate rapid company growth
Bottom line: a coach can assist whenever you desire to grow as a leader.
A coach can be professional development expert (e.g., leadership development, emotional intelligence, performance management) who provides guidance, insight and challenges your thinking. The coach serves as a confidant and trusted advisor on whom you can fully rely upon. When the coach is external, he or she can serve as an objective outside resource to deliver tough messages those on the inside may not be able to do.
The best coaches serve as partners to their clients not because they know the specific details of your particular business, but because they know people, relationships, organizations and how to bring about behavioral change. They can help you with the interpersonal aspects of leading.
A coach can be especially helpful when you are struggling to best manage yourself when you engage with others.
But you also need to be ready to be coached. Those who are coachable are able to readily share their experience. They know their strengths and are able to accept their weaknesses. They are also capable of taking behavioral risks.
Making behavioral change is hard because it’s not instinctual and it is counter to the way we normally behave. It also becomes especially challenging when under stress, which is when it also matters most.
Perhaps one of the most important aspects to consider when choosing to hire a coach is whether the sponsors can be counted on. There may be no better link to coaching effectiveness than whether or not leadership either those above or along side the client are on-board with and supportive of the coaching effort.
As Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan wrote in an article titled “Leadership is a Contact Sport,” leadership is a relationship not between a coach and “coachee,” but between the leader and colleague. It is vitally important that those stakeholders surrounding the one being coached are involved in order for coaching to succeed. Coaching cannot exist in a vacuum.
The ultimate goal of coaching is not dependency on the coach or his or her colleagues. The goal is self-reliance and therefore the one being coached needs to be committed and disciplined.
When there’s a good match between leader and coach, clearly defined goals, a roadmap that leads to behavioral change, commitment to the process, and supportive, involved stakeholders, coaching can be extremely valuable in making more effective leaders.
Nothing will make people change their behavior—no matter how detrimental—until they can see how it is in conflict with their own value system. That alone motivates us toward successful change.
As a leadership coach working with mid-level managers, directors and C-suite executives, much of my work is helping clients change their behavior in order to become more effective leaders. And changing one’s behavior is hard work.
That’s because our behavior is a part of our identity and we defend it by saying it has worked for us to this point. Why change?
Besides, we don’t have to think about our behavior; we simply react. Therein lies the problem. Instead of reacting, we need to take time to respond.
Reacting is action without thought. Responding is action after thought. Unless you’re on the basketball court with the shot clock running down, you probably have a few moments to contemplate your response before acting. Take this time to contemplate your usual behavior, and then perhaps alter your natural and instinctual way of reacting to respond more appropriately.
But this resistance to change is also deeply rooted in our individual value system.
In his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith wrote: “We obey this natural law: People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.”
Our values ultimately guide all our actions and they largely determine the decisions we make. Therefore, as a coach, it’s important for me to identify those behaviors that are out of alignment with the leader’s values in order to secure buy-in.
Goldsmith found that the higher one goes in an organization, the more his or her issues are likely to be behavioral.
In fact, he lists more than 20 such behaviors that even the greatest leaders need to stop doing in order to be more effective. These include things like: 5) Starting with NO, BUT, HOWEVER; 9) Withholding information; 16) Not listening; 17) Failing to express gratitude.
These detrimental behaviors often remain hidden because, while they may be obvious to others, they can be a blind spot for the leader. And we have become very adept at seeing only our best selves.
We judge ourselves based on our intentions and we judge others on how they make us feel, according to social psychologist John Wallen. This disconnect from seeing how our behavior impacts others can keep us from being aware of our blind spots.
The blind spot is an area a coach can help uncover and provide a roadmap for how to change. Results from a 360 analysis and other assessment tools enable the leader to gain perspective and challenge his or her previous assumptions. After seeing and accepting the data, he or she must then commit to the behavioral change.
Without this commitment, no measurable improvement is likely to occur. That’s because no one can make us change our behavior unless we want to. And that’s why the direct link must be made to the individual’s own values.
This link to our own sense of who we are and what we represent motivates us to change like nothing else. When a coach points out how the detrimental behavior is in direct conflict with the leader’s own values, it can help fire up the desire and commitment to make the change.
Integrity is a word thrown around a lot in job interviews and on corporate value statements, but to really live with integrity means to act according to the values, beliefs and principals you claim to hold dear.
You cannot behave in a way that is counter to those values, beliefs and principles without the risk of jeopardizing your integrity. Your behavior is therefore a direct reflection of just how much integrity you truly have.
When our behavior undermines our leadership effectiveness, it’s time to see and accept the compromised connection to our values, and commit to change. Only then can we succeed in making real change in our behavior that will lead to a successful outcome.
Despite his best efforts, your employee misses a critical deadline and an important business outcome is in doubt. How do you respond?
This situation is something every manager or leader faces at some point.
Will your response depend on the individual employee or on how well you have been informed throughout the process?
Obviously, many factors weigh into your response, but your gut reaction is to either attack the person or attack the problem. And these two reactions can result in very different outcomes.
Those who attack the person may find that this employee can never adequately escape from your perspective that he has let you down. And this can be detrimental to both the employee and the organization.
Those who attack the problem may find that this can keep the employee from taking it personally and hopefully learn from the experience. It can also nurture the relationship you have with the employee and likely raise his engagement going forward.
Encouragement can raise employee engagement like nothing else. I’m not suggesting you say only nice things, but you can choose to encourage the positive and let the negative speak for itself.
Throughout much of business, there tends to be a laser focus on problem solving, which is to seek out what is wrong and find a way to fix it. A counter notion is appreciative inquiry, which is about focusing on what the organization is doing well in certain areas and find a way to replicate it in others.
Too many organizations focus exclusively on problem fixing that never relieve the employee or the organization from creating the problems. That’s because it is all too easy to find problems and fix them without really changing anything to keep them from happening in the first place.
Appreciative inquiry, on the other hand, is about recognizing what results in positive outcomes and spreading it around the organization. Often used to bring about strategic change, appreciative inquiry offers an alternative perspective that encourages rather than discourages, that builds up rather than knocks down, that spreads rather than eliminates.
In a recent front page New York Timesarticle, this notion of positivity was focused on the Seattle Seahawks. Led by head coach Pete Carroll, the football team is having a great deal of success in part because he encourages his players rather than beats them up over miscues.
Remaining positive despite interceptions, dropped passes, missed tackles and even game losses has been instrumental to getting the most out of so many of the Seahawks’ late round draft picks and undrafted players. It has certainly played a part in their back-to-back Super Bowl appearances and expectations for returning again this year.
In the same way this positive philosophy is rare in the National Football League, it is also rare in business. That needs to change if an organization wants to be about collaboration, innovation, continual learning and success.
Collaboration requires trust that an individual will not be attacked for doing his or her best—unless, of course, this becomes a pattern rather than an exception. Collaboration requires taking risks and making ourselves vulnerable. That cannot happen if we’re running scared of making mistakes for fear of reprisals.
Innovation means trying new things and coloring outside the lines in order to find solutions. This won’t happen if we are avoiding experimentation for fear of personal repercussions. Out-of-the-box thinking can’t be based on fear, but requires a nurturing atmosphere to foster creativity.
Continual learning is required for organizations to thrive in the 21st century. This means constantly attacking what (not who) is wrong and find ways to fix or do it better. It requires allowing for mistakes, miscues and failures in order to find the best sustainable solutions.
Success is a road paved with failure goes the old saying. There can be no success if we don’t acknowledge our failures, learn from them, and move forward. Acknowledging these failures can be done in a positive light that encourages participants to own up to their part or negative where people hide or blame others.
Author and management consultant Peter Drucker once said: “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways the make the system’s weaknesses irrelevant.”
If this is not focusing on positive rather than negative, I don’t know what is.
Next time your employee makes a mistake, misses a deadline, or falls short despite his or her best efforts, use encouragement. You will find that, in the long run, this will bring about better performance and raise overall engagement.
Donald Trump has garnered a significant lead in the early stages of the Republican presidential primary based—at least in part—on his bravado, brand recognition, and Washington-outsider perspective. Trump is also very good at saying provocative or ridiculous things that keep the discussion from more substantive issues.
It is very early in a long campaign and the polls surely reflect people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. Trump does not speak for rank and file Republicans any more than Bernie Sanders speaks for the majority of Democrats.
However, Trump is building a serious following because he has many outstanding leadership qualities, including confidence, unrelenting tenacity, and fierce negotiating skills. These serve him well in business, but these alone are unlikely to translate into success in winning this campaign or in governing if he were to be elected to the Oval Office.
Let’s take a deeper look at the positive leadership he possesses.
Confidence – When it comes to leading, there may be no more important trait than confidence because without it one cannot make tough decisions. Self-confidence provides the foundation others need to see in order to follow. Trump may border on over-confidence at times and he may need to balance this with at least a little humility.
Tenacity – Those with tenacity are able to get things done because they don’t give up, and it enables them to stay in the fight when most others seek a way out. Tenacious leaders make good leaders because they are driven to win. No one separates winners from losers more quickly and vocally than Trump, but he should temper this with compassion in order to succeed in politics.
Negotiating Skills – No matter the leader, one needs to negotiate deals of some kind. Leaders with superior negotiating skills find ways to get deals done even when there is a standstill. In governing, however, you can’t simply throw more money at problems and exert sheer force of will get bills passed.
Trump has a history of demonstrating these three leadership skills that greatly contributed to his very successful business ventures.
On the other hand, Trump may lack leadership traits that are ultimately vital in effective leaders, especially those in politics. These include integrity, humility, and the ability to inspire and motivate people. Let’s look at each of these more closely.
Integrity – Though this term has become the “awesome” in overuse these days, we do want our leaders to have integrity. It’s hard to do the right thing when no one is watching even though, in this day and age, someone is always watching. Trump is constantly backpedaling with regard to the offensive remarks he makes towards a decorated veteran, Mexicans, women and fellow Republican candidates. One has to question whether he really has a soundness of moral character and honesty to lead effectively.
Humility – Being humble is never fully appreciated, but of utmost importance to lead effectively. Humility may appear to conflict with confidence, but it is really a counterbalance that prevents over-confidence. All too often, Trump speaks as if he has all the answers and doesn’t need others to help him solve complex problems. His egotistical nature may work in the commercial real estate business, but that won’t translate into governing domestically or effectively managing foreign policy.
Inspire and Motivate – The man who tried to trademark “You’re Fired!” is hardly the type to encourage and support others. Instead, Trump rules with an iron fist meant to scare others into performing. While this management technique may work in certain cases for short periods of time, it is not sustainable. And he cannot threaten American voters into voting for him at the risk of being fired. Trump is divisive in a way that provides nightly infotainment, but will not result in competently leading a nation.
In this country, billionaires can pretty much say and do just about anything they want. They can also buy whatever they want, including political influence. (Remember when democracy didn’t include the Koch brothers, George Soros and Citizens United?) But should a candidate be able to single-handedly purchase the highest office in the land?
There is no question Trump has been successful in business, however, that doesn’t necessarily translate into political success. Trump amassed a huge fortune from his various businesses and he has demonstrated many leadership qualities in this effort. But business success doesn’t necessarily translate into political success.
A Washington Post editorial about Donald Trump recently stated: “Anyone—we’re tempted to say any moron—can grab a torch and run in front of the mob. What takes talent is what you might call political anger management: to identify legitimate complaints and turn them into a constructive direction, on behalf of a governing prescription.”
Right now the leading candidates from both parties are polarizing figures: Trump and Hillary Clinton. What is unclear is whether either can be elected.
Leadership in politics, like leadership in business, requires a balanced approach and Donald Trump needs to shore up many areas of his skill set before he will be elected to high office and he can govern effectively.
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/5440388253″>Donald Trump</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Most annual reviews are dreaded both by those giving and those receiving them, yet they are a mainstay in the corporate world. This is because annual reviews can help people stay on track to meet individual, workgroup and corporate goals.
One of the problems is that annual reviews often feel contrived. Typically too much is riding on them because the feedback is focused on past failures, shortcomings and mistakes rather than corrective actions, training opportunities and future success.
As a result, it’s difficult to deliver constructive feedback on performance without the recipient taking it personally.
In many cases, an annual review is the only communication between a supervisor and an employee specifically related to performance. There in lies the problem. Communication about performance should be given much more often, and it should be given in ways that are supportive and instructive.
Feedback in the form of a 360 report can be helpful as it provides a more balanced perspective that includes the boss but other leaders, peers, direct reports and sometimes clients or customers. The sum of this report can make it easier to receive feedback because it represents how you show up in the workplace.
The great leadership coach and best-selling author Marshall Goldsmith in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There suggests getting four commitments from those providing feedback for a 360 report. These four commitments are:
Let go of the past
Tell the truth
Be supportive and helpful—not cynical or negative
Pick something to improve yourself—so everyone is focused more on “improving” than “judging”
When these commitments are kept, 360 results provide an accurate and objective perspective of the individual from which he or she can use as a guide to confidently continue doing what they do well and initiate behavioral change where necessary.
The biggest problem with feedback, however, is that it focuses on the past and rarely on the present or future.
In addition to feedback, we should also provide feedforward to encourage a more positive and dynamic focus on performance improvement. Feedforward is different from feedback in the following ways:
Feedback Feedforward Past Future
Revisit failure Envision success
Who you are (or were) Who you can become
Can be difficult to give Easier and satisfying to offer
Often taken personally Received as supportive and instructive
Goldsmith offered many leaders the opportunity to participate in feedforward sessions where they were asked to play two roles: one who provides feedforward and one who receives feedforward. This was an experiential exercise where the participants did not even need to know each other because it was based on specific behaviors all of us can relate to.
Here’s how his Feedforward Sessions work:
Pick one behavior you would like to change, a change that will make a significant and positive difference in your life.
Describe the behavior to a fellow participant. This is done face-to-face. Example: “I want to become a better listener.”
Ask the participant for feedforward. Specifically, two ideas to help you achieve the change you seek in your behavior. (If participant knows you, he or she should not give any feedback about the past. It should be focused entirely on the future.)
Your job is to then listen attentively and take notes. Do not comment on, critique or even praise the suggestions in any way. Just pay attention.
Thank the participant no matter how good, bad, redundant or unhelpful the suggestions may be.
Ask the other participant what he or she would like to change. Repeat the process with you now providing feedforward suggestions.
Repeat this process with as many others as possible.
Participants report this exercise to be very positive and even fun. What’s truly great about it is that people feel as if everyone is in service of helping everyone else. It is not competitive, but truly collaborative. Goldsmith describes feedforward and the value of it in this article.
A similar idea is in clearness committees from the Quaker tradition, which provide a process of discernment whereby members assist one who has a difficult concern or dilemma by simply asking honest and open-ended questions. These questions are not leading questions or meant to challenge assumptions, but simply to help the individual find clarity in his or her own answers from within.
It can be difficult to ask such simple questions because we are wired to focus on offering advice and solutions. However, what we often need is simply someone to truly listen and help us in finding our own answers.
Feedforward sessions like clearness committees offer the opportunity for active listening and truly supportive attention. They provide a safe and helpful setting in which people can often gain insight into what they want to change or answer.
Regardless of the process, don’t wait for an annual review to best manage your direct reports. While feedback can be helpful, be mindful of the fact that focusing on the past and on failures or mistakes can only go so far. And don’t save it all up for a once a year opportunity.
Don’t let the futility of infrequent feedback undermine your ability to help your employees improve their performance.
Instead, help them achieve performance goals by being more proactive: take corrective action in the moment, catch them doing things well and acknowledge it, support them as they take on new challenges, and regularly communicate with them to ensure there are no surprises at the annual review.
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/13657368@N00/1752089487″>Success is ours!! :-)</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
Can you be sarcastic and become a great leader? Though you may gain some friends and even form a small following with this type of humor, you ultimately will not be a strong leader. Sarcasm will hinder your overall effectiveness.
Sarcastic people may defend their sarcasm because it can help create levity and ease tension in certain situations. And while this may be true in the short term, it can also have unintended long-term consequences.
Growing up I was led to believe sarcasm was a respectable form of humor. It was only later that I discovered sarcasm is really passive-aggressive communication that can undermine trust. Oscar Wilde called sarcasm the lowest form of wit.
Defined simply, sarcasm is when someone says something that everyone knows is untrue in order to draw attention to its ridiculousness. It is typically a sharp, biting or cutting remark, which requires face-to-face vocal communication and is context dependent.
Sarcasm can also make someone feel superior in situations where they perceive they have little control. Though an occasional biting comment can spark a good laugh, frequent sarcasm tends to reflect dissatisfaction that may be rooted in what psychologists believe is anger and hostility.
Sarcasm ultimately offers only two outcomes: it can instantly kill a relationship or slowly erode it. That’s because sarcastic humor typically depends on the derision of a person, relationship or circumstance. The fact is sarcasm requires a victim.
This certainly doesn’t make sarcasm the kind of trait we look for in leaders.
Leaders need to be trusted, focused and decisive; sarcastic humor undermines all three of these.
Sarcastic leaders can’t be trusted because, as a person with authority over others, your words carry added weight. Making fun of someone through sarcasm—even in a light-hearted way—can have a subtle effect causing the people you lead to doubt your trust in them, undermining their trust in you.
Trust is difficult to earn and takes a long time to rebuild. Don’t let yours be damaged for short-term levity.
Leaders need to be focused and not ambiguous. Sarcasm relies heavily on tone of voice, body language and other nonverbal cues to be properly understood. That’s why sarcastic comments are typically lost when done over the phone or in writing.
Sarcasm allows one to claim some sort of authority without actually taking responsibility for what is said. Lack of a focused message means your leadership is compromised and sarcasm only accentuates this.
Decisiveness is also a necessity in leaders and sarcastic comments are typically directed on problems rather than solutions. Being decisive requires moving beyond the problem no matter how ridiculous it may be. Pointing out the humor only delays finding a constructive way to fix it. This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun seeking solutions only don’t use sarcasm as it will only further delay your decision-making.
Sarcasm breeds negativity by discouraging others to focus on what’s wrong rather than on how to fix it. This is the opposite of what a leader should do.
Next time you’re faced with a ridiculous situation and a sarcastic remark comes to mind, hold back and see if you can respond more proactively instead. You may not get the immediate endorphin rush you’re used to, but you will find the way you’re perceived by others will ultimately be more respectful and help build stronger relationships.
Leaders look long term and don’t require the immediate rush of laughter to build their confidence. Focus on solutions rather than problems, nourish relationships without negativity, and always seek to build trust with your co-workers.
Find a way to bring levity into the workplace without sarcasm. It’s better for you and for the organization.
