Tag: employee engagement

Getting beyond the superficial as leaders: 2 Tips
By Scott

Getting beyond the superficial as leaders: 2 Tips

Doug Fields, a blogger I follow, recently shared the statement, “Superficial relationships tend to focus on the obvious and inspire nothing new.” Recently a coachee shared some appreciation of our time together when he said, “It is nice to have a place where I can be myself and feel safe to share the things that are weighing on me.”

Leadership can be lonely. Leadership can also be a series of superficial relationships because we are busy, and going from meeting to meeting tends to keep us focused on the work while the relationships stay superficial. In leading and working with leaders, getting beyond the superficial requires the sharing of feelings. These cannot be seen as readily and are too often assumed or misinterpreted. Here are two techniques for doing this safely and effectively as a leader:

Tip #1: Getting beyond the superficial with others – One-on-one form

Great conversations start with a question. In my one-on-one form, I start and end with questions that invite people to share what is working and not working. The key to using this is to let people answer the questions they want and keep asking them so that, over time, people will get used to sharing what they are feeling. One leader confided that it took 3 months to get someone to start sharing their frustrations and giving the leader honest feedback about how the leader was making their job harder. For a deeper dive into this conversation, watch my JoHari Window video.

Tip #2: Getting beyond the superficial with ourselves – The Wheel of Life

This tool is designed for leaders to do some self-reflection on the balance in their own lives and what they can do to reset their priorities for areas that are important to them. Balance is a moving target, and doing this exercise and sharing it with someone else moves way beyond the superficial and into what really matters to us – and what is not working so well.

Superficial relationships tend to focus on the obvious and inspire nothing new. 

Make some opportunities to move beyond the superficial this week.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

Making Succession Planning LESS Scary – 3 Reflections from my Key Note
By Scott

Making Succession Planning LESS Scary – 3 Reflections from my Key Note

Last week, I led a key note workshop on succession planning with 100+ community leaders from one of the premier counties in our state – Kent County. In the 90 minutes, we spent about 45 minutes learning and 45 minutes practicing the core skills needed to do it well.

What are the core skills?
Asking questions, listening, and creating a safe place for people to answer with the truth.

To practice, they were asked to do two conversations: one using the Team Member Fact Sheet, and one asking the 5 questions at the top of the Individual Development Plan (strengths, weakness, successes, short-term goals, long-term goals). For the latter conversation, I actually did a live, unrehearsed demonstration with a volunteer so they could see how I did things like create safety, gather information, and make it a simple conversation. It was powerful for me because it was so real.

Here are 3 reflections from learning with these leaders:

  1. Too often, succession planning = retirement. In a pre-conference survey, I asked what one word comes to mind when they hear ‘succession planning’. The top 3 answers were retirement, future, and replacement. One of the solutions I push is to stop referring to ‘succession planning’ and start calling your work a ‘strategic talent review’ – which is the focus of my solution.
  2. The fear barrier around the legality of the conversation can be overcome. At the end of the keynote workshop, the general counsel for the group told me, “You nailed your addressing of the legal issues and how to address it effectively.” It was high praise, because I preach a talent/people-centered approach to leadership and I believe in treating people with equality and truth. That endorsement was huge for me.
  3. ‘Listen, observe, do’ can be done with 100+ people! The fact that I went first, so people could see me doing it, helped the learning immensely. This was clear from the questions and observations people made about how to make things safe, how to ask follow-up questions, and what to say to invite openness and feelings of safety.

My bottom-line message was to approach the topic as a talent(i.e., people)-focused conversation and then use that information to understand plans for key roles and key people in your group.

My passion statement (from my own Entrepreneurial Operating System® VTO™) is maximizing individual growth and eliminating needless pain – moving to and past the tipping point of success. As I reflected on the day and how energized I was by my time with these leaders, it was clear what the reason was: I could see the hunger for learning in the group and feel the relief in hearing an approach many could see themselves leading effectively. I could also see several leaders moving toward that tipping point.

If you would like to learn more, here are links to the presentation and some of the free templates I shared:

  1. Presentation (on slideshare)
  2. Development Plan (used top 5 questions)
  3. Key Person / Key Role Worksheet
  4. And here are my top 4 blog posts addressing succession planning:
People-Centered Leaders – Read this article!
By Scott

People-Centered Leaders – Read this article!

I have come to believe that there are two key sources of learning for leaders that will have the greatest impact on their performance: Harvard Business Review and TED Talks. There are certainly many places to learn, but the two of these provide quality, depth, and breadth that will ground you in key fundamentals of being a good person and stretch you in productive ways.

Here is a summary of an HBR article that grounded me in some timeless truths – The Neuroscience of Trust: Management behaviors that foster employee engagement by Paul Zak.

Key points:

  • Leaders know low engagement hurts the bottom line of their business (Gallup and others proved that) but don’t know how to fix it.
  • There are eight behaviors that stimulate the generation of oxytocin, which is a brain chemical that facilitates teamwork. (I will have to trust the author on this one – I missed that class in college. 🙂 )

Be ready to NOT be blown away by these behaviors:

  • Recognize excellence – When you see someone doing great work, tell them!
  • Induce “challenge stress” – Provide people with challenging assignments and/or invite them to help you solve a significant problem.
  • Give people discretion on how to do their work – Focus on defining the outcome of the project and give people space to get there (for my EOS® clients, this is when I ask “What does success look like for this rock?”)
  • Enable job crafting – Allow people to volunteer for work, or add an accountability to their job that the organization needs if they have a passion for it; also allow them to delegate work they don’t like and depend on the team to do it.
  • Share information broadly – Have a defined weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual rhythm of meetings where you talk to and listen to people beyond your immediate team.  Protect that time like it is sacred, and especially don’t allow the customer to cause you to cancel it.
  • Intentionally build relationships – See my Team Member Fact Sheet post . . . .
  • Facilitate whole person growth – See my Development Plan post . . .
  • Show vulnerability – See my Vulnerability post . . .

I appreciate the article because it provides the why behind all of the actions I promote as part of being a People-Centered Leader. The last chapter in my book is devoted to actions that hit most of these directly. I also recognize that teaching leaders the why – in this case, the science – behind trust-building leadership creates a higher level of commitment to the right behaviors.

If you are looking for a summer leadership book study, start here – and if you add my book to the second half of it, I would be glad to talk about showing up one or two times to help enhance your learning. The reason I say add my book is because leaders will all immediately agree these are the right actions to take, and yet we don’t do them – that is where my book kicks in.

This points out that leadership is that simple, and yet not that easy. Leadership is a journey that is best taken with company.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

The Ultimate Team-Building Tool + 3 Tips for Using it
By Scott

The Ultimate Team-Building Tool + 3 Tips for Using it

A friend recently emailed a group of us asking for icebreaker ideas. The group responded with many of the standards: 2 truths and a lie, 5 things we all have in common, and a few other ideas. All effective at getting people laughing and talking – but none can be taken back and used when the new VP walks in or you pull a project team together.

I shared my Team Member Fact Sheet™ – over the past 5 years it has become the only tool I use. My experience with adults is that too many barriers exist in the workplace (or in our cul-de-sacs for that matter) which prevent equal sharing of ‘what you need to know about me’.

Here are three ways to use the Team Member Fact Sheet™ at one of your upcoming team gatherings or EOS® Quarterly Planning Sessions:

  1. Ask everyone to fill it out and go around and share 2 to 4 facts with each other, then hand out their sheet. As the leader, send out your completed sheet first.
  2. Give everyone a blank fact sheet and ask them to meet people and take turns asking each other questions from the sheet. Spend 2 minutes per conversation, then move on. Keep it to 2 questions. Debrief by going around and introducing their current partner and sharing 1 new fact they learned.
  3. Advanced: Fill it out for your teammates. Hand a Team Member Fact Sheet™ to each person on the team. They write their name on the top and pass the sheet to the right. Each team member has 60 seconds to fill in as much information as they can about that person, then it gets passed again. Debrief by having each person share answers to 2 questions the team did not complete and 1 correction (where the team answered wrong). I give each person a different colored pen so their answers are color-coded – and watch as people look around the room to try and figure out who answered based on ink color. Laughter is generated.

Brain research tells us that getting people talking about themselves has the same impact as feeding them or handing them money. 98% of us want to be people-centered leaders, and this is a step toward doing that.

The form is free, and if you want more tips just email me. I love to watch this sheet travel!

Listen . . Lead. Repeat often!

What’s on people’s minds? Clicks and questions…
By Scott

What’s on people’s minds? Clicks and questions…

We were moving into a new building, and created sessions with the CEO for all employees to learn about the move and ask questions. We told our CEO to go around and collect questions BEFORE answering any.

His agenda was architecture, timelines, space for growth, and decorations; their agenda was storage, kitchen areas, and noise/privacy. It was hard for him to not jump in with answers right away, but when each session ended he was excited about the time with his team and made better decisions around the change because of what he heard. The outcome was an amazingly effective move that provided the business with a momentum bump.

When we really listen…people tell us what’s on their mind. My #1 saying to new leaders is, “Mind reader is not in your job description. Focus on listening well, making leadership decisions based on what you hear, and repeat often.”

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

Clicks are like questions. At my monthly business review with my marketing lead, we reviewed what you clicked on the most in the last 28 days. Here is what your clicks told me:

  1. Rock Planning Sheet – EOS template
  2. 5 Key Outcomes – Individual Development Plan Conversation
  3. Talent Management Templates

Your clicks show me a high concern for defining the bigger work you and your people are doing so it can be managed. They also show a desire to manage the longer-term development of your people. Based on many other conversations, I know most of your organizations are doing the evaluations but have never completed the formal development planning with your people.

In two weeks, I will facilitate a day of learning with a group of leaders in a leadership development program I helped create (LeaderWork). Your clicks have given me some great material to share as I help leaders work on connecting strategy to actions for their teams. That is the way good listening works.

Do any of these topics make you want to click? How are you gathering questions from your team this week? If you look at all the questions you are hearing, what new questions get generated for you?

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

If you would like a different perspective on listening and leading, take a look at my JoHari Window video.

3 Difficult Conversations that People-Centered Leaders Have Regularly
By Scott

3 Difficult Conversations that People-Centered Leaders Have Regularly

Great conversations start with a question ~ Scott Patchin

When we ask questions of people and provide space for them to tell us about themselves and share their thoughts, it has the same neurological effect as feeding them or giving them money.

When we ask powerful questions of people, it fills up the OPEN part of the Johari Window. It lets us, as leaders, deal with tangible things in our decision-making, and takes the guess work out of what our team thinks of the change that is happening or the work they are doing.

People-centered leaders find ways to have these difficult conversations on a regular basis:

  1. How am I making your job harder? There are several ways to ask this. If you look in the one-on-one templates I have published, you will see this mining for frustrations is the focus of some of the questions.
  2. What is going well this week? This is a difficult conversation for people who are wired to solve problems and overwhelmed with a fast-paced business to manage. When we ask and answer this question, it forces us to pause and celebrate. It also reminds our team of the progress we have made.
  3. What do you want in the future from your work? Your life? Shifting perspective to the future is important and difficult. There are two questions on the development plan template I share. Having asked them to over one hundred people, I have seen emotions flow from fear to excitement.

Are you a people-centered leader? How regularly are you having these conversations, and how effective are you at having them?

Great conversations start with a question – and people-centered leaderships is about having honest conversations that lead to thoughtful conversations and improved performance.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

Empathy 2.0: The power of leaders becoming students
By Scott

Empathy 2.0: The power of leaders becoming students

I just ended a vacation where our four children were around a lot. One of my goals was to listen, and I also found myself reading one book they all recommended (Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World by Bob Goff) and starting a second book recommended by my oldest daughter (Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam M. Grant). The reading focus was in-line with my listening strategy.  Let me explain . . .

Last month I published my 7 favorite books for a leadership book study. The last book was The CEO’s favorite book. I did that because picking someone else’s favorite books automatically puts you in a listening mode because they love it and `will want to talk about it. For leaders, when you hear someone talking about a book, especially one that is motivational or work related, it is your opportunity to listen.

Walking by the opportunity could be an indicator of what I call intellectual arrogance, which is simply defined as possessed intelligence to a level that blinds us from entertaining another truth.

Walking by the opportunity could also be an indicator of OBN leadership (defined in my book as the Ought, But Not leadership). I believe in the developing of my people, but when given the opportunity to join in their learning I chose not to. People-centered leaders see that an opportunity to listen and

Don’t walk by too many of these opportunities, whether you are leading at home or at work

When the student is ready the teacher will appear.

It is a powerful statement by a leader to become the student. Powerful things will happen in that space. Remember that I titled this post Empathy 2.0. People-centered leaders are committed to finding time to see the world through the eyes of their people.

As you think about development goals for 2017, what about adding Ask each person on my team to teach me something. Here is your goal for being taught:  Success is learning it and applying that learning successfully – and my teacher will judge ‘successfully’.

Listen . . Lead. Repeat often.

A Friday thought for parents/leaders – Thank you Bob Goff
By Scott

A Friday thought for parents/leaders – Thank you Bob Goff

I shared in my last blog about Bob Goff’s guarantee of answering his phone when called. I called and here is what it said “You have reached Bob Goff. I am sorry but I am in a place where I don’t have cell service. Please email me at bob@bobgoff.com and I will get back with you promptly.” So I did and here is what I asked:

I asked:

Your final call to action was Love Does – So what do I do?  Our oldest son graduates in the spring and my wife and I have been coming along side him to support him in making a successful jump to work and life after college. I know you have been in this situation, so what advice would you give us about what we can do to help his transition?

Bob’s response:

Our son is just out of college too. We keep telling him about who he is, and I bite my lip before telling him what to do.  There’s a lot of “You’ve got this!” happening, and not a lot of “Here’s what you need to do.” It’s kind of hard because you and I do know what our kids should do, but having the confidence of a father is better than all the advice.

For leaders – What if, as leaders, we focused on showing confidence and providing support vs direction and oversight?

For parents – What if we practiced some of the same things at home that we do at work?

Finally, Bob provided a guarantee that he did not hit, after all, he did not answer the phone like he promised. Yet he gave me a reasonable option and followed up as promised (< 5 minutes). I could have called out his error, maybe even went so far as to point out the hypocrisy of his promise. That would have taken energy and framed my relationship with Bob as an adversary. The cost of doing that would have been in missing some good advice that has the potential to take me much farther in a role that I cherish – father.

Don’t be afraid of what guarantees might cost you, but have the courage to move the balance of your focus on what they tell the world about you. There will always be ‘gothch’ customers, and over time a guarantee could be a way to ask them to go away.

I am still a fan of guarantees, and I have EOS® (entrepreneurial operating system® to thank for that.  I am now a huge fan of Bob Goff, and it is because of a guarantee and the conversation that happened because of it. Thank you Bob!

Listen . . . Lead/Parent. Repeat often!

(ps. Bob Goff approved me sharing his advice – and responded to my request within an hour. 🙂 He gets it!)

By Scott

Journey to Mastery – What’s in a name? #wordsmatter

I like the word Mastery. The definition (Merriam-Webster) = possession or display of great skill or technique. I love watching Mastery at work, whether it’s a Zamboni driver at an ice rink, a teacher managing a learning space, or an engineer sharing a process created for producing great parts. True Mastery energizes me because of the energy coming from the master.

I like the word so much I named my proven process for individual development Journey to Mastery. Here is why and how.

Mastery: George Leonard wrote a book called Mastery in 1991. I give a copy to every career planning client as the ultimate guide to finding success and fulfillment in life. When a friend challenged me on this book vs a few other more popular books on this topic, I shared my rule – I don’t recommend books where the author’s picture is on the cover. Mastery is work, and while it requires inspiration, it requires a whole lot of perspiration – so I look for people who are going to help create inner strength for the journey.

Journey: This word evokes a trip from one place to another. The special part of this journey is that we don’t know exactly where it ends, but we know what a journey takes: movement, ability to react to change, and endurance.

I outline the basic steps in my publication – Own It! 5 Tips for Managing Your Career and Performance.  This time of year is a good time to return to Step 5.5 – the check-in on your progress and resetting your direction/goals for the coming year. Mastery is not about wandering, and Step 5.5 helps reset the purpose of your journey.

Another great quote from Leonard also reminds us that the Journey to Mastery is inclusive; we just need to focus on reminding ALL people, especially those that need some extra help/support because they don’t believe it is for them.

It’s available to anyone who is willing to get on the path and stay on it – regardless of age, sex, or previous experience.

How are you doing on your Journey to Mastery? How are you promoting it and supporting it in your own organization?

2017 is a great year to start.

Wondering HOW to start?

My gift to you: An outline of my proven process, Journey to Mastery – and it comes without a picture of me. 🙂

3 Reasons Career Discussions Don’t Happen; 2.5 Steps to Start
By Scott

3 Reasons Career Discussions Don’t Happen; 2.5 Steps to Start

I sat down with a leader to talk about succession, and her biggest concern was the age of two key people and the timing of their retirement. When I asked if she had initiated a conversation about their career plans, her answer was, “My lawyer told me not to because they could sue me for age discrimination.” When I asked what their counsel has told them they could do, she answered, “He never told me that.” I was tempted to ask if they had only paid half the standard hourly rate for that conversation, but held back.

This is not a post about age issues, but a conversation around the barriers I see in leaders around career conversations. The reality is there are risks in these conversations because plan <> promise, and yet having these conversations will make you stand out as a leader and will engage your best people even more.

Reason 1: Don’t know where to start (Ignorance) – When I lay out my proven process to leaders, you can see the tension release. They realize how simple it is and come to see their role as more guide/partner than a leader.

Reason 2: Bad past experience (Scared) – The example I shared above is a great example of scared. The other situation is a bad past experience with career plans because they were laid off in 2007-2009 and still see ‘keeping my job’ as a career goal. They are afraid to say it or assume that is what the answer is. One reason I start my own process with capturing strengths and successes is to energize people.

Reason 3: Too much other work (No time) – I received this from a leader, and when I asked, “How much of your time do you think this will take?” they started a list: meetings, having to fill out a bunch of forms, constantly monitor progress, schedule future meetings, and generally do lots of extra work. When I shared with them my process and their role of being present, asking questions, and giving the ownership to the individual, they were pleasantly surprised and this barrier disappeared. It is work, and the work is largely on the individual if it done correctly. Time is a concern, but it should not be a barrier.

In 2015, I wrote Own It! 5 Tips for Managing Your Career and Performance. This stemmed from my experiences helping leaders become more people-centered, in which I noticed them struggling with some of the basic performance conversations with their people. Own It! was written to be handed to someone so they saw their role and each tip becomes a step in the conversation between leader and team member.

Step 1: Ask if it would be of value? If they say yes, hand them Own It! and Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review) to read. If they say no, and you are okay that they have no plan, then focus your efforts on other people on your team.

Step 2: Have them pick the questions around long-term or short-term goals (p. 4 of Own It!). Make the first meeting about reviewing their answers. Ask questions to better understand their answers, and provide them with input on how those fit into some of the challenges you face as a leader and organization.

Step 2.5: Write down their answers and any goals/actions set because of the conversation; set a date to review them in 6-12 months. (Here is a template if you need one.) Around 80% of the time there will be some tangible things the individual can do, either start exploring their plan through gathering more information or actually doing work or start learning around a role they aspire to do.

One of my favorite quotes to frame this whole effort is:

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song ~ Maya Angelou

 

How would it change your own journey if you saw your career plans as a song you wanted to sing instead of an answer you were trying to find/provide?

Go Own It!

My top blog posts on this topic: