Tag: communication

By Scott

An Open Door is not enough – How about an Open Ears policy?

Early on in my own entrepreneurial journey a client asked if I read Inc. Magazine. When I said no and listed the other, more traditional publications, he just replied “If you are going to be an entrepreneur you need to read Inc.”. I listened, and it continues to give me things every month that help me develop.open ears

This month Jason Fried (co-founder of 37signals – Basecamp) makes the case that if your door is open as a leader, it does not mean they are lining up to come in. The article reminds me of a phenomenon I continue to see in workplaces – people are reluctant to bother their leaders.

Here are three excuses(direct quotes!) I have heard from people why they don’t go in:

  • “They are always so busy, I don’t want to bother them.”
  • “If I take them my problem, they will try and fix it.”
  • “I don’t want to look like I can’t do my job.”

When we went virtual with our teams and our time, we forgot to change our terms. Open office is outdated and irrelevant as a concept, because the virtual world has made it insignificant. Here are two habits and two questions to help you translate an open door policy to an open ears policy.

  1. Habit: 20 minute One on Ones 1-2x per month (see my guidelines and template if you want to learn more about this one).
  2. Habit: Eat lunch with your team 2x per month.
  3. Q: What is the dumbest things you are working on? (thanks Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com for this, INC. Nov 2013)
  4. Q: (for one on one) What things should I Keep doing? Start doing? Stop doing?

Do you have any to add?

Talent management is about great conversations, and it does not start with an open door anymore, it starts with our presence and open ears.  The challenge for followers is to have the courage to step into that open ears space and take advantage of the opportunity.  The challenge for leaders is to slow down and actually listen – really listen – and do something with what you hear.  Here is your big risk:  You can fake an open door policy – you can’t fake an open ears policy.

Here are some templates to help you listen better and make open ears work.

Note: Rework by Jason Fried is in my Library/Resource Center.  I also added a few more great reads this month:  The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey and Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard,  Leadership and Self Deception.

By Scott

#nicematters

Today I am giving a speech at the celebration honoring 11 high school seniors who are receiving the Daughters of the American Revolution Good Citizenship Award. It is one I received thirty years ago, and a long time family friend asked me if I would be willing to come back and help them honor these young leaders. It was an easy YES.

I need your help. If you have a Twitter account, please post a comment today saying thank you to someone in your life that is deserving of a heartfelt thank you, and then use the hashtag #nicematters.

Here is the why behind that request. I am sharing three tips with them:

  • Learn to say NO
  • Face to Face: Show your best YOU
  • Store Gratitude (keep a #nicematters file with notes you receive from others)

At the end of my talk, they will get a thank you card with #nicematters on it, and I will ask them to practice gratitude with someone by sending them a note in the next 24 hours. I will also ask them to tweet a thank you to someone, and attached the hashtag #nicematters to it. When they look, I would love them to see a bunch of other messages from different people with the same hashtag.  I need your help to make a point with these 11 future leaders.

For me this is one of my Google-Time activities.  When I started my business four years ago, I made a pledge that I would spend 10% of my time saying YES to certain things because they were fun.  Today is one of those days.  The request cane from a friend who has known me since I was born, and my kids, my Mother, my Father, and my Aunt Ginny will be coming.

Thank you for helping the message of gratitude get passed today!

By Scott

Leaders – How are your people feeling? 3 Tips for starting this conversation

In a career transition program I facilitate in Michigan, our second day starts and ends with the question How do you feel?.  It is a critical and strategic because it challenges people to put one word around where they are at that moment, and as facilitators we can use that word to know where we need to spend more time to circle back for some one on one conversations.  It is not about fixing someone’s answer, but more about giving a voice to knowing when there is a potential barrier to learning/doing the work.  This is one of those keeping the pulse strategies, that allows a group to move forward to important work, lets individuals share where they are at that moment, and in a very direct way ask for help or pause for a celebration.

So what can we do as leaders to create those moments?

First, Do you believe it is important to give your people space to air some of this stuff? If yes, read on.  If no, I encourage you to read one of two books: First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham/Curt Coffman or Drive by Daniel Pink.  I share these not to make you a psychologist.  My advice to leaders is their best focus is NOT to try and get inside the heads of their people, but try and get what is inside the heads of their people on the table so it can be talked about. I probably opened a can of worms with that comment – consider the comment section of this blog as a space to explore that if you desire.  I am happy to defend/discuss it there.  Back to the question – How can a leader get feedback on what is on the minds of their team?

Here are 3 habits that will help you understand where your people are in terms of what is on their minds and/or how they are feeling:

1.  Meeting space (weekly/monthly) – The question: Create an agenda item at the beginning:  Around the room:  3 Wins this week/month and 1 frustration.  The execution: Just listen.  Be ready to plug a big frustration aired by the team into a brainstorming/problem solving space later in the meeting or ask the person to connect later in the day with you to spend some time.  If you are uncomfortable with asking/handling this question/space – get some training/mentoring soon.  Not being able to ask this question and process the answers effectively will be an issue.

2. Create regular space/time to connect directly with employees – The question: What is one question you have or you are hearing that needs an answer?  (note the strategy – people can ask their question (higher risk) or just share one from someone else.  The execution: Make this a monthly habit with coffee and donuts.  This space should be all non-direct reports and select based on anniversary dates for that month / birthdays / just became a leader in the last year / new employee that month/quarter.  The key is make it inclusive and give you a chance to listen.  Small company?  Pizza once a month and find a round table – and whoever is there gets the question.

3.  At monthly/weekly one on ones – The question: Give me one word – how are you feeling?  (Yes it is a little squishy for some, but trust me it is an effective question).  The execution: If you are not comfortable handling the conversation – you need some development help as a leader.  The ROI:  The $ spent getting better at this will save your organization $$$$ in the future and will probably have a positive impact on your relationships outside of work too. (marriage, kids, partner, name it . . . . )

 

Mini trU Tip: Why I think some coaching training for leaders is critical? When you invite people share things stuff will come out that requires you as a leader to: 1) Ask more questions to help the individual reveal what is at the core of this issue  2)  Help the individual identify one thing they can do to address it or explore it more so it can be solved at some point in the future.  If you want to spend some time learning about the voice of a coach I direct you to a blog I love by Mary Jo Asmus or a book I like called Co-Active Coaching.  My only caveat is that spending time in both of these resources will help you experience the voice of a coach, and especially the Co-Active Coaching book will help you understand the process of coaching.  In the end, if you want to become proficient at it plan on starting with a year-long commitment to learn about it and practice it.

By Scott

Empathy – How I experienced it with a dog and 3 ways to build it with humans

I just finished a book called The Art of Racing in the Rain, which is a story told through the eyes of a dog.  Coincidentally, we just added a puppy to our family.  The book was amazing, and I will never look at Harper, or any other dog, the same way again.  In her presence I am constantly wondering what she is thinking, and trying to get her to tell me.  Read the book before you call me insane.  I now have empathy for dogs.

Harper Lee Patchin

There are lots of very clinical terms and tools for helping leaders understand what the people in their organizations are thinking.  360 feedback tools, employee surveys, personality assessments, behavioral assessments, classes, consultants, CEO breakfasts . . . . the list goes on.  I once had a new leader tell me the #1 surprise for them in becoming a leader was the loneliness because nobody told them things any more AND nobody asked them how they were doing.  It is too bad no one else understood that except me, he might have stayed longer.

Empathy – probably the number one challenge in any organization that prides itself on leaders that have relational capacity with the people that work for them.

Here is a secret – it is not a test, or a consultant, or a mini-PhD so you can guess more accurately why people do things.  It is a conversation.  One that happens with the sole intent that we need to know what each other are thinking.

There is a big topic, but let me give you three ways to help your journey of empathy:

  1. Make a habit out of asking people about themselves. What do I mean by that?  Here is a template I use with almost every group I work with.  Nothing fancy, but if I had a dollar for every time a team member was surprised by the number of children someone had or where they were born.  Well, I would be richer. 🙂
  2. You first. How do you share with your team what is keeping you up at night?  How do you tell them when you are dealing with a terminally ill parent?  I had a leader once share that ‘a pity party is the last thing I want.  I just need to man-up and get through it.”  Hmmm – at what cost?  10% of your team is paranoid that another cut is coming?  A new report thinks your disconnectedness is normal and leaves for another job?  Nobody steps up to pick up the balls you dropped (weekly staff meetings maybe?) because they are still in the coffee room stage of wondering What is up with Bill?  One leader once shared that monthly they took 2-3 minutes at the staff meeting to outline the top 2-3 problems they were trying to solve.  In the end, the team started picking a few up and solving them for the leader.
  3. Pick a relationship that really matters – and go have some conversations. For a leader that has a spouse or significant other, I recommend spending the next 2 months reading a book that focuses on understanding each other.  The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman or For Men Only / For Women Only by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn.  Have a teenager?  What about go to a speaker on teenagers or commit to monthly breakfasts with them for the next 6 months.  I start with significant relationships because they matter the most and there is usually a strong reason to spend time on it.  Your sole job is to listen to understand – not tell to convince.

For me, it started with a dog book my wife told me I needed to read.  It is my daily reminder that I need to try a little harder, because there are always lots of reasons not to worry about 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

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

Greg Hartle – Wisdom from walking around

I had a chance to share a meal with Greg Hartle.  Does his name sound familiar?  It shouldn’t.

Not that he is not remarkable, but he is not trying to be remarkable and famous.  He is just traveling around the country, making enough, and trying to rebuild his life as he works towards some goals – one of which being to help 500 people.

Really?  After a near death experience and asking himself some big questions, he decided to take $10, a laptop, and some clothes – and go help people.  If you want to know more here is his link. I want to brand him with some statement like – Meet Mother Theresa wearing jeans.  But the truth is that would do a disservice to Mother Theresa and to Greg.  You see, he is just trying to be a better Greg, and that should be good enough for all of us.

I loved listening to Greg.  What hit me was the perspective he has gained from sitting in the living rooms or across the table from over 250+ people across this country trying to help them through their life transitions.  He is focused on micro-micro economics.  In that world the graphs go away and we can talk in names, addresses, and challenges.  He is also one of those genuine people that makes you want to shut out the world for a while and enjoy being present.

Two thoughts he left me with that continue to roll around –

He sees lots of people fully prepared for a world that no longer exists. If you are not ready to personally manage the cycle of learn, unlearn, and relearn – then in a few missed cycles you risk becoming stuck in a difficult place.  Learn, do, do, do, do better, do, do, do, do, do a little better – does not exist.

Purpose + Passion + Skill for their craft.  Many people have purpose and passion, but too often the gap is in the level of skill they have for their intended craft.  You see, the skill piece takes a dedication to something, over the course of time, to work towards mastery.  (see Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule)  Also, see point number one.

The rest of Greg Hartle’s story can be followed on Facebook, or check out the business he just launched at newmethods.org.  He was also a great speaker if you are looking for someone to inspire your group.

Thanks Greg.

 

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.

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.