Category: Self awareness

By Scott

Behind Performance Adjectives Series: Narcissistic

He is a Narcissist.  Can you fix him?

When I hear the word Fix I usually have to fight a smile.  Not a smile because something is funny, but a smile because that comment implies  people are like machines, and with a replacement part, some oil, and maybe a few ball bearings (for you Fletch fans) and they are good to go.  It is not that simple.

First, when a heavy label like narcissist is thrown out there, the first step is to get to what people mean by simply responding – “That is a big word that can mean lots of things.  Tell me a little bit more about what you  are seeing.”  If you look in Wikipedia here are some of the descriptors for narcissism:

  • An obvious self-focus in interpersonal exchanges.
  • Problems in sustaining satisfying relationships
  • Haughty body language
  • Vulnerability to shame rather than guilt

With such a range, it is critical to clarify what people are seeing first.

Secondly, realize that chronic mental illness is present in <6% of the population, and in any year 28-30% experience a mental or addictive disorder.  (see my past post:  Nobody Behaves Well In The Corner)  If you think someone has a mental illness, it is probably only temporary and there is probably a good explanation if you have the time to explore it and understand it.

Finally, if you have the time, a tool like the Birkman can help put words around what they are feeling (or missing) because the stress behaviors the Birkman identifies are often the exact things that lead people to believe that someone is a narcissist.  Here is an example of two stress behaviors under Challenge, which describes our self-imposed demands for achievement.

  • Too critical and demanding of self an others
  • Feels inadequate, fears failure

A slow recovery for a normal company results in the same phenomenon as a fast growing company – do more with less.  That tension creates stress with people by itself, then throw in life (death, divorce, job loss) and we have recipe for lots of behaviors that get labels like narcissistic, crazy, or nuts.

Step one is not Fix it.  Step one is just to get it on the table to better understand it.  Tools like the Birkman help that conversation.

 

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

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

Listen: If you hear any of these 3 things you/we have a problem

Leading people is hard.  It is even harder when leaders are in a mode of talking more than they listen.  When you lead knowledge workers, remember that when you are doing most of the talking their brain is focused on processing what you tell them and reacting to it versus using their own brain to think what they want to do and what questions they need to have answered.

I always promote more conversations – which means two people in direct contact with each other sharing the burden of talking and listening.

As I coach leaders and teams through the transition of having more purposeful conversations, here are things I hear that alert me that someone is not being honest or they are stuck in a place that will keep great conversations for ever happening unless they make a choice to move forward.

  1. It is someone else’s fault: It might be, and if we are talking about what help you need to get to a different level of performance, identify a target job for yourself, or maybe to find more joy/commitment in your work . . . . does it really matter whose fault it is?  If this becomes the primary focus there is a problem.  If accountability is the ultimate goal, then making fixing the problem the priority will make it easier to have the conversation of – What can we do to make sure this never happens again?
  2. I cannot do ANYTHING until you do your job: Really? I used to do a junior achievement activity around production. Each person had a job to do in assembling an item, and there was always one person who could not work fast enough.  Sometimes, people just stood and watched the person struggle.  In other groups, the people around this individual helped out so that the bottleneck went away.  If you choose to watch or chose to say no to any offers of help, then you are really the problem.
  3. I am too busy to have this conversation: Okay, if you are too busy now when would be a good time? This is a flag for me that something else is going on. Imagine not wanting to have a discussion about what we can do to make your job better, to improve the support I provide you as your leader, or to make career plans for you?  Too busy? Hmmm . . . .

It is messy to start the habit of more conversations with your people.  If you are a leader that has not made a habit of slowing down to listen to what your people need, it will be a hard change.  If people are used to you telling them what to do and not listening to their ideas, or not always explaining your decisions, then it will be hard for them to make the shift to owning things that are hard – like offering their own ideas and fixing their own mistakes.

If you work for someone trying to make a shift in their leadership style and you give one of these responses, then you are effectively saying “I do not support the change you are trying to make and I would like to work towards you staying the same”.  Really?

If you are a leader trying to improve the conversations you have with your people, here are some templates that might help you get started.

 

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

Good advice for new or old grads – Effective Immediately Post 1

I am in the process of reading/reviewing a book by Emily Bennington and Skip Lineberg called Effective Immediately – How to FIT IN, STAND OUT, and MOVE UP at Your First REAL JOB.  As I go through it I will share some thoughts that make me go Hmmmm . . .  This posting is based on one of those moments.

As I started through this book I found myself grinning at some of the helpful hints.  Not because they were funny (other than the statement – If someone farts, ignore it), but they were the kind of things that are simple, obvious, and too often lost in the shuffle of starting something new.

Advice I liked:

Under the heading Have Patience – a quote from Sir William Osler (a pioneer of modern medicine): The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well. A great reminder not to get caught in the who is looking and what is the next project.  Just focus on what is in front of you.

Professional etiquette:  Listen more than you talk – Obvious, but how often do nerves translate to communication misses such as talking too much.  Remember that when someone talks about themselves it stimulates the brain in the same way as when someone is eating or receives money.  Get others talking about themselves and listen.

Professional etiquette:  Always clean up after yourself. This one makes me smile, because my first job was in a steel mill where nobody every cleaned up after lunch and expected the janitor to do it for them.  Then I worked for a company that had a cultural norm around this, and every place I have been since I still wipe down the counter in the coffee counter when I leave.  I watch for this habit.

Reality check: Traditional HR departments are either gone or spread thin.  Most new people do not really know the function of the HR department, so they will not miss them.  But this statement is true, and even more true for smaller organizations.  The book goes on to give a list of Macro and Micro items that could be used by anyone to do their own onboarding plan.  For example:  Macro item:  What are the key responsibilities of your job? and Micro item:  Who is your supervisor or boss you report to directly, and who do they report to?

So far I like it.  As with all business books I believe they need to be read with a partner or small groups.  This book is written in short sections that fits that model very well, and is a great reference tool because each short chapter equals a skill.

More to come . . . .

 

By Scott

4 Performance Words – What Seth said, and What I think

Seth Godin recently blogged about performance, and outlined four kinds:  Bad, Good, Remarkable, and Personal.  Here is the whole post.

In a world where we too often treat performance with labels like Right person/Right seat or A player / B player / C player – it is good to just use words that we all know.

Leading performance is about not walking by the work without letting people know what you see.  It is about getting their view of the work and what they see in others.  It about celebrating things being done, asking a few questions to plant seeds that might lead to a different view of the work, and challenging people to a different level of involvement and ownership.  Try these:

  • Where did you see passion in someone else’s work this week?  How can we celebrate that?
  • How did you personalize your work this week and who benefited from it?
  • What work do you have in front of you that has a chance to be remark-able in how you do it?  What will make it worthy of that label?

Of course you ask these questions, listen, and always revisit them.

Personally, I would drop Bad and Good in favor of Absent and Solid.

I like reading Seth – his thoughts are generally remark-able.