Category: Professional Development

By Scott

Boss Watching: 3 Actions to Manage it

I was listening to a webinar from a seasoned OD/Leadership professional and she threw out a word that made me smile.  Her statement was – The #1 hobby in the office is boss watching.”

I was once reminded that people watch leaders.  After one of those month-long stretches of dealing with several difficult situations in a row I met one of our team members in a hall and greeted him with a smile and a “Hello Charlie”.  He provided a similar reply, and then added “it is good to see you smile.  I have not seen that from you in 3-4 weeks.”  It had been a tough month for me, and he had noticed.

Remember that 90+% of communication is nonverbal.  Leaders that are in a hurry provide information to the people around them in sound bits and actions.  It is also natural to gather information and fill in the blanks.  I think back to a game played with children where we make a circle and start by wispering a message in the ear of the person next to us.  The message returning is always different.   Our actions and non verbal cues are like little whispers to our teams.

Here are three purposeful ways to deal with boss watching:

  • Onboard well:  Tell new people up front what your nonverbals are around busy/buried with work, and when it is okay to interrupt.  If people know your habits and you know theirs it will be easier to understand/interpret messages.
  • Meeting Habit:  Weekly updates with your team should include a quick around the room What is on my plate this week? to address what stressors everyone is dealing with.
  • Make it clear – ASK!  If you hear a rumor that could have been generated from boss watching, address it openly.  Your script should sound like this:  “I have heard . . . . . . . . and know that I have been acting like . . . . . this week, so I can see how my actions could feed that.  Here is what is happening . . . . . .    If you ever wonder about such things please ask.”

What story are your actions  telling?

Here is a way to have some fun with this.  At your next team meeting ask three questions: How do you know when I am having a good day?  How do you know I am having a bad day?  What are my habits at work?  Just blame it on a leadership blog that talked about boss watching. 🙂

By Scott

Building the Habits that Develop People/Culture

Recently an HR leader shared some good news – “Our CEO is now thinking about retention of people because we had one of our best project managers leave to go to another company.”  It is a positive thing to have the attention of your leadership on the retention and development of your high potential people.  But what is the cost of losing one of your best people?

I am reminded of a study done by a peer one time that estimated the cost to replace a leader in their organization at around $10,000.  These were hard costs and did not include team productivity, mistakes by hiring an outside person, etc.  In my work with growth organizations I think this number is low.  If the high potential or the leader is in charge of starting a new business or product line, then their absence will probably cost the organization 5-10x that amount.

Celebrating a CEO’s renewed vigor in retaining people is warranted, but when I hear the words refocus or renew it tells me that an initiative is starting.  An initiative is a response to an event with a plan to fix something that is broken.  What is broken are the habits that people see as a real commitment to their success – both job and career.

A solution – twice a year sit down and check how you are doing on your habits that, when done routinely, will make the need to initiatives go away.  I put together a list that is yours to use, it is called a Talent Scorecard and here is the link.   I also did a short video to talk about how it could be used.  Use the results to get your Habits back on track.

In all areas of our life, good habits make initiatives go away.  It is the day to day/week to week things we do around fitness, finances, relationships, spirituality, personal growth, and family that guide us to a preferred future.

It is in our habits that we tell people what is important to us.

Make a list of the weekly habits you have (meetings, conversations, personal, family)?  What do they say about your priorities to the people watching you (your people/your children)?

What is it costing your organization or you personally because certain key habits are not there?

By Scott

Lifeguards for Leaders: Who is watching?

I am a father of four.  With a sixteen year-old driver as part of that mix I sometimes think I have seen it all, but I am still hit by things that make me go Hmmmmm.  Here is one of those moments . . . . .

Who is watching your new leaders or new teams?

At swimming lessons for my 8 year old I looked down and saw 30+ kids, 5 instructors, and in the middle a lone lifeguard watching everything.  I saw the need for the lifeguard, but did not recall them being present for past lessons.  Later I asked my wife about it because one of her summer jobs was being a lifeguard, and sometimes she has proven more observant than me. 🙂   Her response – There is always a lifeguard because when you are teaching it is difficult to watch all the kids all the time.  There is real risk in not watching young children near water, when being 99% safe is not enough because the 1% has a name, parents, friends, and a beating heart. 

My mission is to be a guide for others so they realize the excellence they were born to achieve, and in living that mission I often engage with and worry about the safety of new leaders and teams.  My world is growth organizations and leaders/teams in transition, and I see the real risk in not having a lifeguard around to monitor safety/progress in their pools.  Here are three ways organizations create lifeguards for leaders/teams:

  1. Mentors:  Assign mentors(not their boss) to meet frequently (1-2x a month) with new leaders to see how they are doing, watch the team during the transition for evidence of issues, and just provide support.
  2. Six month transition plans:  New leaders need to connect with their teams, build the trust of their teams, and get assignments where they can generate wins for themselves/their team.   Formal written plans helps make this happen.
  3. Leadership peer groups: Some call it Leadership Orientation or New Leader Training.  Fortune 500 companies can afford a program, but the main benefit of these programs is to create a peer support network.  Peer support can happen with no impact on the income statment, so any organization can afford it. 

One myth . . . Our human resources leader is our lifeguard: You mean the HR leader who has to respond to daily people emergencies, do it now calls from the CEO, worry about legal compliance, and answer frequent questions about benefits/payroll/etc?  Reality check . . . Do you want your lifeguard watching the pool 70% of the time?

Lots has been written about leadership transitions.  Michael Watkins is an expert in leadership transitions and his research has determined 40% of leadership hires from outside of a company fail within 18 months.  Brad Smart is an expert in hiring and his research suggests that it takes organizations 18 months to let go of a bad leadership hire at the cost of 14.6x their base salary. 

A 40% failure rate is a lot of drownings.  I think organizations need to do a better job having lifeguards around. 

  • How safe is your pool for new leaders / teams? 
  • Who is your lifeguard?
By Scott

As a Leader, What is Your Job?

A friend recently shared an article with me documenting the results of a study by Training Magazine and the Ken Blanchard Companies.  The study was focused on answering the question “What’s important in creating a motivating work environment and whose job is it?”.   The study looked at job factors,  organizational factors, and relationship factors.  Here is a link to the study.

When asking the question “Leader, what is your job?”, let’s look at the results from the question “Who, in your opinion, has primary responsibility for influencing and improving the following Job factors?”.  Here is how people answered that question:

Job Factor -Owner

  • Meaningful Work – Myself
  • Autonomy – shared between My Leader and Myself
  • Task Variety – shared between My Leader and Myself
  • Workload Balance – primiarily Myself, but My Leader plays a part
  • Feedback – My Leader

Two things to take away from this.

  1. Leaders, it is not all on your shoulders.   Your people have to and WANT to own certain pieces. 
  2. As a leader, your primary responsibility to to make sure people are getting feedback and to partner on task variety and autonomy.

There has long been a conversation about the importance of leaders as coaches.  The voice of a leader/coach is not giving directions, but asking the What and How questions in their interactions so people become problem solvers and build the confidence and competence to make decisions.  This is autonomy!

These results highlight what many other studies have shown, people need great leaders, and great leaders do not own everything!  As a leader, you need great followers.

Print this study and review it at your next leadership team meeting.  Ask the follow-up questions: 

  • How does my leadership style  promote/disrupt autonomy? 
  • What do my feedback habits look like? 
  • What is one habit I should add?

Tweet

By Scott

Why People Don’t Hear – 3 Actions To Help

  • I did not see this coming.
  • How can you let me go?  Just last week you said I was doing well.
  • It is too late for a counter offer.  The decision has been made.

I have seen lots of different situations in 20 years of working in and around organizations.  It was not until recently that I stopped being surprised by situations in which people did not see the news they should have heard.  We could discuss the endless reasons why, but that would not stop it.  Here are three ways to make most of the confusion go away.

  1. Write it down: Verbally telling people their performance is not up to par is only half the task.  When asking for more or defining minimum expectations it has to be written down.  Limit yourself to a page, but write it down.  If it is positive, do the same thing.  I am confident that 100% of the time verbal feedback is misinterpreted.
  2. Never deliver ANY news (good or bad) without scheduling a next step:  Bad news:  Take this and think about it for 48 hours and then lets get back together and make plans for  what will fix this situation.  Good news:  You are very valuable to this organization and I would like to come up with a list of projects/roles we should be working towards over the next 3-5 years.  Give it some thought and lets sit back down in a month and do some planning together.  People need time to process bad news.  Good news needs to be celebrated, then processed.   Next steps ensures the processing time is valuable.
  3. Ask them what they heard:  It is important to check for understanding in either situation.  In the delivery of good and bad news leaders usually talk too much because of nerves.  That is normal, but it is always a good check to end with – I have talked a lot, and it is important that some key points were clear.  What are you taking away from this conversation?  If they cannot repeat the main points you should repeat them (even if they are written down).

Assumptions are dangerous and we all have a hard time telling / hearing certain messages.  Follow these simple steps and make the confusion go away.

Do you have any helpful hints to add based on your experience?

The Resilience Formula – for Leaders . . . for Followers
By Scott

The Resilience Formula – for Leaders . . . for Followers

I grew up in a community of scientists. I went to school with lots of engineers.  While science is not my passion, connecting the dots for people by finding a way to simplify big things is how my brain is wired.  I see a need to understand what stress looks like for leaders in transition, people trying to self-manage through over promised and under resourced projects, individuals starting a new company, and a host of other situations.  More than understand, a key life skill is to figure out how to get unstuck and moving forward.  This is resilience.

Through personal trials, coaching, walking with friends, leading, and a host of other experiences I’ve settled on an equation I use to represent resilience.  

Hope > Fear + Anger + Despair + Frustration + Worry + Hunger + Mistrust + (Fill in the blank)

When the > (greater than)sign switches and the right side takes over our personality changes.  Is it normal for the equation to change on occasion?  Yes.  That’s life.  Is it healthy to let the right side dominate too long?  No. 

This has been talked about before.  In Good to Great Jim Collins talked about the Stockdale Paradox.  Admiral James Stockdale’s(a prisoner of war) presented the survival method of acknowlodging the brutal facts of a situation but never losing faith that he would prevail.  This is resilience.  

As leaders, we need to take care of ourselves.  Exercise.  Prayer.  Vacations.  Healthy Diet.  Reading.  Naps.  All of the above. 

Remember that your resilience will rub off on your organization.  When you are leading from the right side your stress behaviors come out and your ability to react/flex your leadership style to manage others goes away.  The Birkman Method assessment identifies these as stress behaviors.  When we name them, we have a chance to manage them.

In a slow economic recovery, resilience becomes as important as cash.

Tweet

By Scott

Your voice is smiling

Recently I had the opportunity to share some good news with someone over the phone, and as I listened to their answer I could hear some added energy in their voice.  My comment back was “Your voice is smiling”.  The giggle (and it was a giggle!) on the other end of the line confirmed my suspicions.  It was a special moment.

Business puts us on the phone a lot.  As I listen to voices or the standard “I am not available to take your call right now . . . . . ” messages, too often I do not hear a smile.  Business can still get done without smiles, but the energy of a smile makes it feel different.

For you:

  • Record your message this morning while smiling, then listen to the replay.  Can you hear your smile?  What difference will it make with your people?  Your clients?
  • Start your next voice conference with a “Share some good news . . ” section.  Do you hear smiles?
  • When you hear a smile, use the same line I shared above.

As kids we played follow the leader purposefully, as adults we do it unconsciously, but we still do it. 

Today, try leading with a smile.

Tweet

By Scott

I can’t afford leadership training right now . . . what does that mean?

I see a great trend happening, organizations starting to get back to the routine of developing leaders – both current and future.  It is good for people and for leaders.  It is a nice trend.

My only concern is the mindset that focus = money in the minds of many leaders.  I know real priorities receive budget and headcount, but let me offer some competing thoughts.

  • Importance = time
  • Importance = presence

Let me explain.

Your best people are not looking for more compensation or awards, they just want new challenges, engaged teammates, and a chance to do what they love.  Uncertain of my compensation claim?  Read Drive by Daniel Pink or chapter 7 in Sway by Ori/Rom Brafman. Not buying into what high potentials need?  Read trU Tips #2 that I published.

Instead of starting with a pay per use leadership program or hiring a Director of Talent Management, step back and ask yourself “Are we doing the basic things that will drive the right development conversations regardless of the economy?”  Here is a guide for your self assessment. 

Developing your leaders for today and tomorrow is not about spending money, it is about investing time into:

  • Conversations that let people know they matter
  • Conversations that help you understand what people want /need
  • Conversations that help create a target for people to strive for
  • Conversations that let people know that you are watching, willing to help, AND that you care about their success

Great talent management is about investing time. 

Budget does not replace time.  If you can only do one – – – start with time.

By Scott

100th Post: What do I believe?

I looked up and saw the number 99 at the top, indicating I am at a milestone with this post – it is #100.  I thought I would celebrate that by asking myself a question I think all people and all teams should do routinely.  What do I believe?

I believe . . .

  • . . . the best conversations start with a commitment to listening.
  • . . .  people are amazingly resourceful and resilient, and sometimes they just need a little help.
  • . . .  friendship is defined more by the mountains we climb together than the celebrations we have at the top or bottom.
  • . . .  feeling lonely is a reality, being alone is a choice.
  • . . . change is a reality, managing the change well is a choice. 
  • . . .  a commitment to serve others should come first, followed by the willingness to say “thank you” and “I am sorry”.
  • . . .   life begins to make more sense when we have a foundational belief about something – but BEWARE of foundations that shift often. (this is my VALUE OF WISDOM belief)
  • . . .  leadership is working with people to accomplish their goals and the goals of the organization. (thanks Ken Blanchard)
  • . . .  to be loved by others is a gift, to accept that love and to love others back are choices.
  • . . .  to be trusted by others is a gift, to trust others is a choice.
  • . . . companies are in business to make money and to make a positive impact on the world around them (ie.  make a difference), AND they get into trouble when they forget to apply these two rules to their decisions.

There are probably a few more to add, but I also believe in keeping most posts under 300 words. 🙂

Here are a frew questions for you / your team:

  • What do I/we believe? (it can be called a SWOT analysis or strategic planning)
  • What are the top 3? Which are new?
By Scott

My Lessons from the The Go-Giver – and why Millenials are way ahead . . .

I do not do a lot of book reviews in this blog, but I just completed The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.  First, let me say that I resisted reading this book until three different people that I highly respect recommended it.  The following entry was inspired by the thoughts this book generated.

Why did I start a business?  How do I measure my success?  

When hearing a story of success we often focus on the opportunity presented to make money.  Sometimes a genius (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) or sometimes an ordinary person (look at the people around your town) see an opportunity to fill a need in the market and turn it into successful business.  We call them entrepreneurs.  In our history as a country, many of our super wealthy focused solely on building their wealth, and became socially concious later in their lives when the “What is my legacy?” question started swirling in their mind.  We should celebrate their conversion, but recognize that they did not start their business with that as a priority.  The Go-Giver fundamentally challenges the notion that giving comes after success.

The Go-Giver generated two questions for me that have been rolling around in my head. 

  • Who (or whom) do you serve?
  • How do you/will you measure success?

I think of some young entrepreneurs I have met recently and they don’t necessarily think of these questions because their answers are already woven into the fabric of their life and business.

For anyone over 35ish, remember there is a generation behind us that has these questions as part of their fabric.  They have experienced  the fragile nature of life (9/11), the uncertainty of employment (2 major economic downturns in 10 years), and the ability to build meaningful relationships with a keyboard (internet).    I wonder how a millenial would view this book?

Worth the read, but don’t do it alone.  Find a partner, with the goal of writing two question that it generates for you.  Then spend your time together trying to answer them.