Leadership Minute: managing emotional triggers in stressful situations

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Leadership Minute: Healthy Conflict

BIV Boardroom Strategy: Adopt the right behaviours to help execute your strategy

[read time: 3 mins]

Your behaviour as a leader has an enormous impact on your team and your organizational culture. Understanding the effect of your leadership behaviours on the execution of your strategy is the first step in guiding your team in the right direction.

As a leader, the best way to harness momentum and motivation around your strategy is by consistently behaving in ways that you want to see others behave, and exhibit the behaviours that you want to ingrain into your culture and ultimately pass down to everyone in your organization.

Here are a few things you can do to sustain momentum and support the execution of your strategy by being intentional with your leadership behaviours:

Be decisive and take action, however small, towards your goal. When temptation to postpone, cancel or move deadlines presents itself, let people see you take one small step toward the goal – when you can’t do it all, something is better than nothing; if you can’t do all of it, do some of it. When you put a visible emphasis on forward motion in the execution of your plan, chances are others will follow your lead.

Road to Respect: Path to Profit by Erica Pinsky

It is no secret that the world we work in has changed dramatically in the last few decades – the way we work, the type of people we want to work with and the type of work culture that drives positive results.

With all of these changes, Erica Pinsky points out in her book Road to Respect: Path to Profit that the one thing that hasn’t changed is that employers still hold the ultimate power in the workplace; with that power comes an even greater responsibility to build a culture based on respect as the key to sustainable profitability. Studies show that money is not the main factor keeping employees in a job any more; people stay because of workplace culture and relationships.  Therefore, with the shifting demographic and opportunities available in the new millennium it is imperative that organizations are aware of the dramatic effect their workplace culture has on the bottom line.

Through case studies and stories about what the top Employers of Choice are doing right, Pinsky encourages us to evaluate the current state of our work environment and empowers leaders to be proactive in building the kind of respectful work culture where the link between culture, job performance and profit is appreciated.  The Road-to-Respect: Path to Profit offers key insights and calls to action that change the way we view respect in the workplace.

Part 1 takes us through what respect is and what it looks like as a core competency in the workplace.  Part 2 dives into how to create a value-based culture where respect is one of the most important core values.  Pairing examples of how some of the most well-respected and successful organizations in Canada are doing this with impressive statistics, we are shown how things like embracing diversity, aligning people and processes with core values, having respectful collective leadership and promoting coaching throughout the organization can transform an organization into an Employer of Choice that attracts and retains the top talent. Part 3 is where the course is really charted. While every organization will find its own path, Pinsky, provides tools on how to assess and evaluate respect in your current culture starting with questioning and information gathering as the foundation.

This easy to read book paints a clear and vivid picture of what the many facets of respect looks like in a thriving organization.  Through numerous ‘respectful practices’ we are not just told, but shown how to move toward a culture where respect is a living a core value and success and profitability are the outcomes.  It is the “roadmap” to respect and path to profit.

Definitely worth the read.

Leadership Minute: Checking out assumptions

Leadership Minute: I’d rather be happy than right.

From Manager to Leadership: building your Leadership Roadmap

Here’s a question I get asked fairly often: how can I move from being a manager to truly becoming a leader? It turns out that the answer is “it’s a journey; one you can start right now.”

The journey becomes more focused as a result of having a roadmap to follow to help you understand if you’re on track and making progress. The roadmap starts with a destination in mind and that destination is not obvious “title-based approach.”

Here’s a step by step process for helping you create your own leadership roadmap:

Step 1 – One perspective on the difference between managers and leaders is that managers manage tasks and projects while leaders inspire, guide, mentor, and coach their teams. The reality is the key difference is actually in the eyes of the followers. It turns out the perception of followers plays a big role in developing as a leader: if followers aren’t willing to be led then you will have no one to lead. This understanding is the first step.

Step 2 – Once you understand the role perception management plays in leadership it’s time to consider what leadership outcome you are striving to achieve. Your Leadership Vision is the “what and where” of your leadership journey: where do you want to end up and what will you do when you get there? As Cheshire Cat said to Alice, “if you don’t know where you’re going then any road will take you there!” This vision can be a role or position within a company or organization or it can be what you will be able to accomplish as a result of your leadership journey.

Step 3 – Now that you have your Vision, your what and where, it’s time to consider the how: your Leadership Core Purpose. Your core purpose is the underlying values, attitudes, and beliefs that drive your behaviours and actions towards my leadership vision. One question to help you determine is, “if we asked your followers how they would describe your strengths as a leader, what would they say?”

Step 4 – Now that you are clear on your destination and know how you are going to get there we need to understand where you are today. Draw a line down the center of a page and on the left side write a list of your leadership strengths both behavioural and skill/role related. On the right side of the page write a list of the areas you need to get stronger at that are consistent with your vision and core purpose.

Step 5 – Next to each area that requires improvement and each strength that needs to be maximized write a direction action you can take is year to move your closer towards your leadership vision. These actions can vary from reading, to taking courses, attending webinars, joining peer-groups, getting coaching, finding a mentor, finding opportunities to take on leadership roles outside of work (in my experience chairing a volunteer board is an amazing way to grow your leadership abilities), etc.

Step 6 – Now that you have actions setup it’s time to put some accountability into place. Create due dates and first steps for each of the actions. Then select an Accountability Buddy who can support you on your Leadership Roadmap, hold you accountable, and provide feedback and shared experiences when you feel stuck or at a crossroads.

Step 7 – Each quarter setup a review, evaluate, and revise session for yourself to see what progress you’ve made, what’s working, what’s not working, what’s missing, and what you can celebrate.

After reading this you may be thinking that the journey of a leader is more than an outer, visible journey, it’s a blend of the outer and an inner journey. If you have read the autobiographies of great leaders you already know how much of their focus is becoming a great leader was on self-reflection and discovery. This is the inner journey that is woven like a ribbon through the Leadership Roadmap. Think of it as your own personal iceberg: so much of the real weight is hidden below the surface and forms the true stability and power behind the iceberg.

I’m interested to hear about your personal journey as a leader. Please add a comment to this blog post so we turn this monologue into a dialogue.

How can I make people care?

[read time: less than 1 minute]

I received an email today from a CEO the other day asking me, “Do you have any good references / literature on ‘how to make people care’? I’m having some employee challenges.”

I thought I would share my response with you:

“Three ways:

1) hire people who care (it’s an attitudinal thing, not a training thing)
2) show a direct connection between success for them and why they should care
3) lobotomy – expensive and illegal but can dramatically shift innate personality traits. For examples of when this doesn’t work I suggest renting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and yes, I know, that was a potion, not a lobotomy – you get the idea).

Motivation is not something people need to receive. It’s finding ways to remove the things that demotivate people that keeps them motivated (if you hire self-starters).”

Candor

The most straightforward piece I’ve read on candor comes from Jack Welch’s book, Winning. In Chapter Two, he refers to candor as, “the biggest dirty little secret in business,” but more specifically as people not expressing themselves in a straightforward way and withholding their comments and criticism; usually in an effort to avoid conflict.

Welch summarizes the positive effects of candor on an organization as:

1. Create better outcomes: get more people in the conversation which leads to more minds and more ideas.
2. Speed things up using the process: surface, debate, improve, decide.
3. Cut costs: replace boring meetings, pointless updates, and presentations with real conversations about the core issues.

Why aren’t we candid: we’re taught not to be at a young age. Sensitive or awkward issues are softened or avoided. Our parents scolded us for pointing out something that we thought was obvious but “wasn’t a nice thing to point out.” But the main reason we’re not candid is simple, it’s easier not to be.

So how do we reverse the trend and our learned childhood behaviours to create candor in our companies? Reward the behaviours you’d like to see more of and lead by example, no matter where you are in the hierarchy (although it is easier the higher up you are).

What steps do you take within your organization to promote and reward candor?

Our leadership development philosophy

Over the past year I’m consistently asked to answer the question, “what is your overall leadership development philosophy?” I thought it would be helpful to put pen to paper and blog my answer. Our experience over the past 10 years working with thousands of senior leaders in medium to large organizations has led to some core tenets that consistently hold true. Over the past year I’ve written several posts that together sum up our leadership development philosophy. I’ve consolidated those here and added a few thoughts to round things off:

1. Why most Leadership Development initiatives fail
   
2. Interactive Business Learning Experiences™:
   
3. Theory versus reality: many “leadership development consultants” have academic backgrounds but little to no practical experience in the trenches working at an executive level. Their approach is based on case studies and teaching theories. The challenge with this is the Grand Canyon sized gap that exists between theory and application. Having leaders who can “talk” about leadership but cannot clearly demonstrate in a tangible way (and by tangible I mean a way in which others can easily understand what they are doing and learn for the approach), leads to great theorists who talk the talk but can’t walk the walk.
4. Three Core Areas of Leadership: The are actually three core areas of leadership that leaders need to become students of: leading self, leading other, leading organization. Most people only consider the second one, leading other, when considering how they can develop their core leadership skills.
5. Authentic Leadership: Bill George in his talk at Google describes Authentic Leadership in a way that resonates with what our experience at ViRTUS.  Here are the five learnings from his hour long talk: leadership is about internal development and introspection (self-awareness) not how you create a perception for the public, know your values and what’s really important to you, it’s the sweet spot at the intersection of your greatest strengths and your greatest motivation, find a support team and mentors who you can be totally honest with and who can be totally honest with you, lead an integrated life by being the same person in all areas of my life (authenticity).
6. Emotional Intelligence: The founding father of Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ) in the workplace is Daniel Goleman. He developed the four main EI constructs as: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness (sometimes referred to as awareness of others), and relationship management. Our experience has shown us that by weaving these tenets into the background of the competencies we help leaders develop by showing them practical tools and techniques using everyday language, leaders can be coached much more rapidly into demonstrating changes in behaviour.
7. Andragogy vs Pedagogy – the old school style of having a teacher stand at the front of the room and lecture to the students about a theory has been proven not only to be inefficient in helping adults learn, it’s also incredibly boring for the learner. The new style is collaborative, engaging, interactive, focused on opportunities and challenges they’re actually facing, accountability based (instead of memorizing), and open to failing as a key part of the learning process.
8. Adult Experiential Learning Cycle
9. Entrenching Learning
10. Five Stages of Learning: There are five stages of learning that we grow through when absorbing a new concept literally from apathy to “this is just the way I do it”:  Unconscious incompetence – I don’t know what I don’t know, Conscious Incompetence – I know what I don’t know, Conscious Competence – I know what I know, Unconscious Competence – I don’t know what I know, Reflective or Enlightened Competence – I am aware that I don’t know what I know but I can shift back into conscious competence to teach someone else.
11. How do you know it’s working?: The reality of transforming a business is fairly straightforward: if you can’t change a behaviour or a system within the business then everything stays the same. The easiest way to measure changes in behaviour is to witness them using the ViRTUS Video Test.

As always I welcome your comments, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m interested to hear what your personal experience has been in helping develop leaders within your organization.

PS Why post this on my blog where my competitors can see it? It was an easy decision. Even though people can cut and paste the words, they can’t match the results we provide and at the end of the day, that’s what matters.