Category: Professional Development

By Scott

Words and Presence

What do you like about this teacher?

Well, she is nice and . . . . .

You know the first thing you said was She was nice?  Being able to connect that way to students is a gift.  It goes beyond doing.  It is about really caring, and we sense that.

I witnessed this conversation between my daughter and my mother.  My Mom is a retired teacher, and her words reminded me how important it is to listen to what people say.

The words we use tell a story about what is important to us.  It is not magic, it is conversation.  The magic is in choosing to be present and willing to explore what you hear.

The words remind us what we should be doing to make deeper connections with people around us.

One of my favorite coaching topics is empathy and building relationships.  When leaders take on the assignment to go listen more the stories they return with are always full of magical moments.  It is not easy to make a change like this, but the reward makes it easier to keep trying to make it a habit.

Try it today, by simply asking the question – On this team, who is your most valuable person?  What about them is so special?

Just listen.

Safety and Leadership – 2 Tips for Seeing It and 1 Tip for Creating It
By Scott

Safety and Leadership – 2 Tips for Seeing It and 1 Tip for Creating It

After a recent team conversation I was reminded how important feeling safe is to people.  When safety is there, conversations have a depth and significance that put individuals and teams on a path to a good place.

I named my company The trU Group because in my years leading and helping leaders I have come to believe that the two key things for leaders to focus on every day is Building trUst and leveraging that trUst to get the trUth spoken.  One of the adjectives I would use to describe a great conversation – SAFE.

Trust creates SAFETY - the TRUTH follows

I am a consultant, so when I go into an organization I often get bombarded with opinions and information.  Inherent in that information are various versions of the trUth.  The question I have learned to ask, especially if I am hearing a frustration with someone else is How has this information been shared with person x? Here is how I read safety based on the answer:

  • I can’t share it.  / There is no way I can share it. – My standard rule when I hear this is there is a safety issue.  This needs a follow-up question like.  Tell me a little more about that? or What is the barrier?
  • Not yet.  / I am not sure how to share it. – Not a safety issue, probably a courage or skill issue.  A great situation for coaching.

So what is a standard rule for leaders to create safety?  I would share a quote that sums it up.

Truth-telling works best when it involves revealing your own feelings, not when it is used to insult others and get your own way.

George Leonard – Mastery (p. 126)

In the end.  Leader go first, and focus on the things that the person you are talking about cannot see (ie: What you are feeling.  What is on your mind. What is keeping you up?  What has gone really well this week?)  My only do not statement is – DONOT start with a critique of what someone is doing wrong.

You will know when SAFETY is there.  Just listen for it.

 

Knowing our roles: One Thing A Leader Does
By Scott

Knowing our roles: One Thing A Leader Does

We finally got some winter where I live.  Yesterday we enjoyed the chance to go cross country skiing and sledding.

When we returned home and I was settling in the question came – Dad, would you come outside and help us build one of those big snow forts? My inside voice initially said No.  After all, my agenda was about rest and focusing on my to do list.  Then I realized how important it was for them.  So my verbal answer was Yes, and I spent the next hour helping them create a pretty cool fort.  The effort was rewarded later when my daughter’s friend was being picked up and the girls were bragging about the fort they built.  Their pride was my reward.

You see, there are certain roles we take on that, as part of the role, we commit to doing things that are important to others.  When we do that, the big message is You matter, so you get my time.  Relationships are built when we commit some of our time to the priorities of others.

Being a leader is one of those roles.  Inherent to your role as a leader is spending time worrying about/supporting others. Is it a sacrifice?  Sometimes.

One of the great books I have found that paints a picture of this time commitment is The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard.

Remember your roles today – and make some of the commitments that come with them.

By Scott

Forget your brand. What is your art?

 

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient.  the medium doesn’t matter. ~ Seth Godin (Linchpin, p.83)

It is popular now to talk about our reputation in terms of our Brand.  Just this week I received an email touting a class to define and grow your brand.  Coincidentally this week has also been a big week for another brand that is working hard to salvage its reputation.  Have you read anything about Livestrong?

Inherent to every coaching or development conversation I have is focusing on the foundational understanding of who you are, what you bring, and the experience you are creating for others.  I don’t like using the word brand because it is a word that too easily moves into the area of spin and perception.  I follow Seth Godin’s quote (fyi – he is also a world class marketer, among other things) to use the word Art.  Inherently, Art is personal and carries with it a passion for creation and sharing.  In the age of flat organizations, fuzzy job descriptions, and leaders too busy to provide daily care and leadership to their people – the world needs more artists.  An artist sees their gifts and finds ways to practice it because they love it.  An artist finds community naturally because they understand other artists and express sincere appreciation for what they do.

The other quote that Godin shares on the same page is from Roy Simmons ~ Most artists can’t draw.

Quit worrying about your brand.  Worry about your art and your medium.

(If you want to explore this further is to read Linchpin by Seth Godin.  I also use a model called trUYou to help clients frame this conversation.)

For a full list of books/resources I recommend here is my library.

By Scott

Employee Survey 101

I just finished delivering an employee survey to an organization that gets it.  By gets it, I mean that they understand the importance of being purposeful about strengthening culture and the hard work it takes to grow culture.  When I think of the word to describe a key ingredient for doing this project successfully – courage.

Here are some key things to understand before starting this process.

101.1  REMEMBER:  There are two fundamental questions you are trying to answer using an employee survey:

  1. How are you feeling?
  2. How are we doing (as leaders)?

*My partner on this project made the quote:  When we do the survey we are asking your people to assign a number to what they are feeling.

101.2 The employee survey is a conversation. Remember, by definition a conversation is the information exchange of ideas by spoken words.  To have a successful conversation it requires two people that are willing to speak and listen.

101.3  The key steps in an Employee Survey

  1. Deliver the survey (It shows you want to talk)
  2. Deliver the results (it shows you are willing to listen)
  3. Follow-up conversation (It shows you ARE listening)
  4. Present back progress report at 3/6 months (It shows you listened and you value their input)

 

Talent management is about great conversations.  This can be a great conversation, but it is not an easy one.

Here is my single page of Fundamental Beliefs.  It is meant to scare you and support you at the same time.

Final thought:  Taking courage AND wisdom into a challenging task is critical if you want to be successful.  Please bring both to this if you decide to do it.

By Scott

Leadership Journey – Strengths to overused Strengths

They were a year into their first leadership role and the feedback was You do not care.  How could that be – because I do! was the defense.  The proof to the contrary was two valuable people leaving the organization and the final expert doing everything they could to help the leader fail.

A universal truth of most people that write about competencies or personality profiles is the simple fact that if we have a strength (example:  getting work done) and if that strength is overused, it becomes a weakness (example:  so task focused that people do not care).  This is and should be one of the number one focuses of developing leaders, and if you look at a leadership program that is laced with classroom time and lite on self awareness/feedback – run.

If you need a second opinion and are not afraid of a 200+ page business book, read Flip Side by Flip Flippen. The Flip Side: Break Free of the Behaviors That Hold You Back

If you are a coach, and you want this conversation in the voice of a coach – read What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

If I had you at hello with this conversation and you want to jump in and try to avoid the mistake again, here is a simple way to start that conversation and get to an action plan:

  1. What are the reasons you got this leadership role? (list as many as you would like, pick the top 3)  *as their leader, feel free to correct their list after they have created it.
  2. How are these reasons (actually they are strengths) going to help you in this leadership role?
  3. How are these same reasons going to get in the way of your success?  What actions do you need to take to be successful and how can I best support you in this transition? (fyi . . if they don’t ask for help, so at a minimum meet with them weekly for the first 3 months)

The other solution is to speed past this conversation, let the situation play itself out, and try and fix it later.

fyi – Michael Watkins found that 40% of outside leaders hired into an organization fail in the first 18 months.  Brad Smart contends that a bad leadership hire takes 18 months to fire and the cost is 14.6x their base compensation.

Hmmm . . . .

By Scott

Rule #1: Sleep

A friend who has never read a business book recommended Rework by the founders of 37signals.  It has made my top shelf and there is one message that helped preserve my sanity during the start-up of my business.  When you are tired, sleep.

Seems simple, but in our drive to complete everything and show any customer in the world that comes in contact with us what an amazing performer we are, the bar gets raised to a point that most of them cannot even see or appreciate.  For me, I was so focused on getting it all done that I forgot I was skilled at my craft and that many of these tasks took a third of the time if I was rested.  So since then I have just gone to bed, and here are a few outcomes for those who need data:

  • 0 missed deliverables
  • 0 feedback from clients indicating I was unprepared
  • 0 feedback from anyone that I appear more rested

The benefit was that it also allowed me to hone in on my new rule that when the house shuts down and my spouse goes to bed, I put everything down and go to bed.  A simple rule, but it has made all the difference.  Nobody else will care that you slept, except the people that have to live with you.  Doesn’t that matter?  It should . . .

Holidays is about being present and putting things down that can be handled later.  It should not take a book or a blog to tell us go to sleep, but sometimes these messages need to be spelled out and we need to be in a place to hear them.

My message for you:  Thanks for listening and sharing your stories with me.  I will not bother you until Jan 7, so stay present with the people that matter in your life.

Have a great holiday.

By Scott

You don’t need more data

An email came from the Gallup organization yesterday inviting me to buy a full ranking of my Strengthsfinder results for the bargain price of $89.  It promised my 34 talent themes ranked from strongest to weakest.  For those of you that have never taken it, when you buy Strengthsfinder 2.0 or Now, Discover Your Strengths from Gallup you get a code that will allow you to take an assessment that gives you your top 5 talents.  It is a great assessment.

Great move by Gallup, because the popularity of this assessment has resulted in tens of millions of people taking it.  If 1% get excited about this offer it will be very profitable.

I have personally helped over 500 people understand their Strengthsfinder results, and in every group there is always one person who wants more data – all 34 talent themes ranked.

My standard response has been – “What would you do with more data?”  The answers I hear includes statements like Then I will really know or words like certain, exact, and total clarity.

My response – Talent themes start the conversation.  The rest of the conversation is about understanding them, self-observing to see them at work, building on them, refining your understanding of them, and then repeating this process endlessly.  It is not a neat and clean project that ends with a deliverable.  In the end, someone tells you something like You are wise or You do a great job adapting to different situations.  In that is the inherent belief that You get yourself.

Self-awareness is a journey.  It is more about the work than the data.  Would you respond to an ad that claimed Receive total consciousness on your death bed for $74.99? (this is for Caddy Shack fans)

Feel free to buy more data, but you don’t need more data.  Do the work.

By Scott

My Top 4 Learning Tools

A thought was shared from Greg Hartle (@greghartle) last week about his impressions of people he meets that are in career transitions.

Many people are perfectly prepared for a world that no longer exists.

One area people struggle with is learning.  We wait for events, programs, our leader to direct us, a performance review, time away from our job to learn, or ___________(fill in the blank).  In a corporate class, experience shows me that 70% of people come to class without a clear objective.  In a personal study I have done, 100% of people who went to Google and typed in a “How do you . . . . ” search question had a clear learning objective.  Email me if you would like the full results of my study. 🙂

My favorite places to learn:

  • LinkedIn – I believe Greg’s perspective can be substantiated based on how someone leverages LinkedIn.  This tool is as much about setting up learning communities as it is about building a professional network.  Joining groups and asking/answering questions on a weekly basis.  This should be a cornerstone of your learning strategy.
  • Inc – I still get a paper copy.  It makes me old school, but the information I get from people trying things out is so valuable for me as an entrepreneur and an advisor to growing companies.  For a close friend it is Wired magazine.  I added that for 2013.  More to come . . .
  • TED – At the end of the day every TEDx video is still an event.  Given that, I am still shocked by how many people I work with that have never heard of this.
  • YouTube – 48 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube every minute.  (see graphic) I once had a friend with a health issue that needed to start giving himself monthly shots.  He is a bit impatient, so after trying to find someone to help he went on YouTube, found instructions, and did it.  I do not recommend this course of action for everyone – but he is clearly not the person Greg was talking about.

As I watch my teenagers interact with the Internet I realize the line between living and learning is non-existent for them.   The mantra that separates boomers from a millennial is a simple shift from I will outwork you to I will out-learn you.  The hardest worker is not the automatic winner anymore.

What are your favorite places to learn?

By Scott

1 on 1’s – Do you ask this question?

Shortly after publishing my last trU Tips on doing effective One-on-Ones (read it here), I received a note from a leader I respect.  I have never worked with him, but every time we talk he asks me questions that make me think.  He is also very willing to try new things.  He is a very valuable part of my network.

Let me call this trU Tips 22.1. In addition to the two questions I recommend once you mastered the basic One-on-one conversation, a third question to ask is – What should I keep doing the same?

Remember the goal of a One-on-One is to build trust and focus by creating space for your people to talk about what they are getting done, where they need help, and get a sense for how they are performing vs the standards you have set for them.  The advanced questions are about getting feedback for you that will help you continuously refine your own effectiveness as a leader.  Think of these three questions:

  • What do I need to do more of?
  • What should I keep doing the same? (the new question)
  • What do I need to do less of?

If you ask these questions and log in the answers over a 3-6 month period, I guarantee it will give you the same results as a professionally administered 360 feedback tool.  In financial terms, the choice is listen for free or spend five figures having someone else listen for you.

I love my network – they make me better.  I am listening.