Tag: individual development

By Scott

Never Start With Do

Last week I had the privilege of delivering a 3.5 day leadership training to a group of emerging leaders.  One of the things I cherish about new leaders is their hunger for learning, and it is infectious.  Great conversations start with a question – that is my mantra.  Our time together was structured around questions and each learner had a learning log in the form of a poster that they put on the wall.  It turned out to be an amazing way to watch the journey of 20 different leaders as the answered questions like:

  • What is your definition of leadership?
  • What makes your job critical to this organization?
  • What are my strengths?
  • What skills/knowledge do I already possess?
  • What capacity do I need to build as a leader?

Our time ended with action plans and I heard many of the same things – I need to go DO . . . . .

My one piece of advice is always make your first DO = self observation, not DO = practice the behavior.  Here is why.  In my new book I talk about the OBN leader(Ought But Not) and the trap of thinking you are doing things in a way that are most effective for your people.  Just taking time to watch yourself in the situations where you think you are being an effective leader will help you test your belief.

For example, one leader mentioned that she realized through observing herself in an active listening exercise we did in class that spending 3 minutes (even 30 seconds) listening to someone was impossible because her mind started to swirl with how to fix their problem.  For her practice, I advised her spend a week watching herself in listening situations and practicing active listening to see what she did well and where she struggled the most.  At the end of each day email herself what she experienced and how her capacity to be present with others showed up for her.

Then – set a goal (that is SMART) and enlist the support you need to be successful.  This includes asking one person to serve as an accountability/feedback person for you.

It is that simple, but never that easy.  I get that.  It is powerful to watch people ignited by learning, and when individuals start owning their learning it is cause for celebration.

The moment I knew the learning was working was when 3 leaders formed a group to read Crucial Conversations together, with the goal of increasing their capacity to manage conflict.  It was priceless!

What are your answers to the questions I posed above?

At its core, talent management is about great conversations.  Go have one.

 

Do What You Love
By Scott

Do What You Love

When I am bored with TV and having hundreds of channels with nothing to watch, I fire up the AppleTV and go to Vimeo.  That habit has given me  two videos that I think about often – one for a guy now called Slomo and another chronicling the challenges of Formula 1 driver Alex Zanardi.  I can remember watching each and just smiling.  It was a smile not based on something being funny (although Slomo reminded me of a friend of mine), but more on the fact that two individuals made a choice to chart a different future – one on their own and one because circumstances forced a change.  It was a smile celebrating a choice made and the inspirational story that resulted.

A foundation of professional development at any level is based on a similar choice.  It is hard to see that choice when we dislike our boss, worry about the debt that needs a paycheck to support it, or are scared of not having a keycard to enter the building you have been going to for a decade.  It is also hard when like our team or the praise that comes from having the same customers that know us and love us.  I preach the lines great conversations start with a question and when we have honest conversations that lead to thoughtful actions, the result is improved performance.  Three questions that come to mind when I think of these videos are:

  • What are my choices?
  • How do I want to be remembered?
  • What matters to me?

Here is a link to my 5 Tips for Managing Your Career and Performance – and the number one is Own It.  If you know someone (or maybe someone that works for you) struggling with their next step, please pass this on.  The caveat I am adding is that most Own It outcomes don’t mean rollerblades on the strand in LA.  More often it means some different projects, a bigger smile at work, or finding more balance between work and life outside of work.  I call these pivots, and whether big or small, they all start at the same point – ownership.

Living into choice is simple, but rarely easy.

Do What You Love.

 

By Scott

When we don’t react, and Listen

Great conversations start with a question.  As a regular reader, you probably are tiring of hearing this statement from me.

A friend reminded me yesterday of a lesson she was re-learning with her kids.  They were testing her with statements meant to shock her, and while her impulse was to react, her intuition told her to take a deep breath and simply say “Tell me a little bit more about that?”  Then keep breathing and listen.

She also reminded me that I taught her that through watching me facilitate a group.  I was flattered, and also secretly glad she did not follow me around as a parent. 🙂

The goal is never to mask what you are thinking and be seen as a Teflon person who is never rattled.  The real goal (and my intent when I do it as a facilitator)  is to delay reaction until more is learned.

Here are two methods I have designed this kind of listening into key conversations I encourage leaders to have:

  1. Performance conversations:  What are 3 things you want to accomplish with this review?
  2. One-on-ones:  What is energizing you right now?  What is frustrating you right now? What do you want to make sure we cover today?

It is important for you, as a leader, to remain calm and focus on understanding before reacting.  Certainly, there is a case to be made that the words Fire or a gunshot going off demands a quick response.  Yet those who are professionals in responding to such events are trained to assess even as they react.  Leaders need to learn that – and it begins with having the discipline to ask a couple of questions to lead them past the emotion to the core reasons they are making that statement.  Behind a reason is a need, and leading with their needs in mind is what leaders do when they actually care.

Put another way, to care is to listen.

Great conversations start with a question.  Questions put us, as leaders, in the position of listening.  Listening is good, and remember to breathe.

 

By Scott

Why I Hate Job Descriptions, and 3 Things to Fix Them

Recently I was handed a job description for a not-for-profit volunteer role.  What hit me was the length (2 pages) and the line that said Reports to.  I know everyone reports to someone, but if I am looking for volunteer work would I look for another boss or somewhere I could have fun and be significant?  By the way, this organization is struggling to get volunteers, and when they do people are confused with their roles.  This happened because someone from outside their organization handed them a template for defining roles and they just copied it.  As we have formed organizations and worked hard to help align work through multiple levels of management and different functional areas, the job description has become a barrier to work, not something that supports it.

Here are my three frustrations in job descriptions:

  1. They lack passion:  Depending on who you listen to, the percentage of people that are disengaged or only moderately engaged in their work is somewhere between 40% and 75% of the workforce.  When we hand a traditional job description to someone it is an invitation to be mediocre and uninspired.  It is almost as if people need to work hard to get excited about their work (and luckily 20-30% of them do) because too often we don’t give them a lot to work with.
  2. They are long on detail and short on performance:  Where are the top 5 priorities in this role and how we will measure success?  Remember leadership is not how people perform when you are standing there it is about how they run the business when you walk away. 15 – 20 responsibilities with no metrics for success is not a performance focused approach to work.
  3. They don’t invite people to think about What more could I contribute?:  Seen this line before – Additional projects as assigned.  Message – As your leader I reserve the right to give you any other kind of work and you need to do it.  Wait here while I go lead and be ready to go when I get back.  (sorry for the Dilbert moment – but am I right?)  When we list 15-20 things we take away space for people to dream or choose to jump into an area of need and make a difference.  What if we just listed the additional projects you were thinking about that would help move your business forward and make this role more significant?

Three fixes:

  1. Share the significance of the job:  Instead of focusing on 4-5 sentences of General Responsibilities, create a section called Job Purpose, and use it to define why this role exists in an organization.  Not fluffy language like create traction or cultural beacon, but significant action works like owns, leads, builds, creates, or guarantees.
  2. Only list 5-7 items and each one gets a measure:    There are 4-5 things that every job does on a daily basis and there is a way to measure success.  Focus on sharing that.
  3. Include HOW work is accomplished SEPARATE from what they do.  99.9% of companies are less than 500 people, and most companies are not going to create values statements that stick to the walls.  However, every business has a culture and expectations for how people should work together.  Those are values, and need to be spelled out.  When we do that a couple of things happen.  First, we can hire the type of person we want because there are specific things we look for in people and we can tell them.  Secondly, your company will stand out in the hiring process because nobody talks about this.  NOBODY!

I publish a variety of templates to help people do the little things of managing talent that will make a big difference.  Take a look, and under Onboarding is the Role Summary and Focus form.  As always, yours to use and if you make improvements I would love to see them so I can share with others.

We inspire people when we invite them into something more significant.   Rewriting the job description gives people space to do things that matter, whatever the job.  This is not everything to managing talent well and building a great culture, but it is a start.  Go start well!

By Scott

What Leaders Do – To Serve

What is a leader?

What does a leader DO?

How do I become the leader that I aspire to be?

Great conversations start with a question.  Becoming a leader requires someone to ask the three questions posed above, and then commit to the work of making the beliefs you have about leadership show up in the habits and skills you develop as a leader.

Six months ago I started a journey with a group of leaders in their field to launch a program designed to help a leader explore these questions, and start DOing the work of being a leader.  The group is called LeaderWork, and we are actually launching a year long leadership development program through our local university (Grand Valley State University).  If you are interested in learning more, here is a link .

One answer to this that is a core belief of mine and shared by the rest of our group – Leaders Serve.

To serve you have to care about the needs and goals of others first.  Not exclusively, but first.

To serve you have to be willing to take time to listen first, and find ways to make the priorities of your people your priorities.

To serve you have to be quick to say I am sorry, because the reality is that things will happen when things people want to do have to be put off for a time because of the needs of the business.  Or you will just forget.

To serve, you have to DO things like:

  1. Getting to know your people at a little deeper level – Why did they join the company?  What do they like about the role?  What are their talents and passions?  What are other ways they can see to contribute?
  2. Let them get to know you – All of the questions in #1 plus things like,  What are my priorities this week?  What keeps me up at night?  What people inspire me?  Why did I become a leader?
  3. Be ready to allow others to help you.  No relationship is healthy if it is only one way, and when we stay open to opportunities for others to help us and for us to help others, good things happen.

What is a leader?

What does a leader DO?

How do I become the leader that I aspire to be?

I believe that if you aspire to be a leader that has great impact, it is critical to start with these questions.

What do you believe?

 

By Scott

Ignorant vs Stupid vs Agile

Ignorance is defined (Merriam-Webster.com) as lack of knowledge, education, or awareness.  In contrast, the definition of stupid (Merriam-Webster.com) is having or showing a lack of ability to learn and understand things.  The fine line between being ignorant and stupid is the ability to learn.

Taking that one step further, in research done by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger they identified one competency common to all people that became successful leaders – learning agility.  It is defined as the ability and willingness to learn from experience, and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions.  People with this quality fail, but don’t normally fail multiple times on the same issue and find a way to apply learning from the past to new situations so they can find success.

I also recognize that some lack the ability to learn certain things, and yet I have dozens of examples from clients who work with people with disabilities or special needs that have seen learning happen because they raised their expectations of those individuals and stopped treating them like the labels that had been put on them were permanent.

There is not test for learning agility, but there are some practices that allow people to share their capacity and willingness to learn.  You know my mantra – Great conversations start with a question.  When we have honest conversations that lead to thoughtful actions, the outcome is improved performance.  That is learning agility in action.   Here are some questions that test for it:

For yourself:

  • What do I want to learn this year?
  • What did I learn this past week / month / year?   Did I do it  the easy way (someone helped me) or the hard way?

For individuals:

In One-on-One:

  • What were recent successes and failures?
  • What do you need to learn faster?  What support do you need?

In Performance Conversation:

  • What did you do well this past year?
  • What could you do better?
  • What do you need to learn?

In the end, there is no difference to a leader from those who don’t have the ability and those who do not want to demonstrate the ability.  All organizations have these individuals, and hopefully do not have too many of them.  The latter reason is the most prevalent from my experience.

Sometimes I wonder if removing labels from our politically correct society soften feedback to the point that it is hard to hear.  Maybe we should use the words ignorant and stupid more to help people see their options more clearly.  People with learning agility will see the challenge in the direct feedback.  People without it will be offended – at least we would know who is who.

By Scott

Inviting the Voice of Ownership

I remember the conversation vividly.  His call came two weeks after my Situational Leadership class and his frustration was evident.

I am asking all the questions you gave us in the training, but they are not giving me any answers.   The How can I support you? question is just creating awkward silence, when I know they are buried and complaining.  I feel like that training was a waste of time.

That conversation was over a decade ago, and started me on a quest to better support leaders and those they lead in having more meaningful conversations.

So here is my response after years of working with other leaders and individuals in this space.

1.  Be patient – The lens of a leader is generally one where they see themselves as nice and approachable, so not answering questions confuses them.  Too often, people do not see them as approachable.  I can think back to an extremely approachable leader I was working with, and the feedback from her team was She is so busy, I hate to bother her with my problems.  Her approachability was impacted by people liking her too much and not wanting to bother her.

Her fault?  No.

Her problem?  Yes.

Creating the space and continuing to share WHY you believe this time is important is the step to focus on.

2.  Look for opportunities to DO support – Talking about support is one thing, but people need proof.  Your best people will only need a little proof.  Your lowest performers will need a lot of proof.  Focus your time and energy on your best people, and continue to provide evidence of your commitment and INVITE your other team members to join the performance conversation.

Notice I did not say try to convince them of your commitment.  People have to make their own choices, and you need to focus on what you control which is your actions and keeping what you are thinking in the OPEN part of the Johari Window.  (see my video to hear about the JoHari Window)

3.  Be patient, and celebrate your successes.

Summer can be a good time to re-start relationships because people are relaxed and have lots of things to talk about.  Use this time to build relationships and invite people into more meaningful conversations about their future and the future of your business.

Just don’t get bogged down by the people that do not want to go there.

If you are interested – here is a presentation I created to support individuals in managing their own career and performance.  A full whitepaper is available on request – just ask.

By Scott

Relationships: Building vs Maintaining

Relationships are tricky.  They start at random places – soccer games, first days of a new job, school functions, board meetings.  They only actually become a relationship, a thing that we can point to or hold up as something that has been created if we continue to deal with each other or are connected in some way.  See the basic definition:

Relationship (noun) – (Merriam-Webster.com)

  • the way in which two or more people, groups, countries, etc., talk to, behave toward, and deal with each other
  • the way in which two or more people or things are connected

We have to be careful to define it as a TRUe relationship just because we are connected through something like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.  This connection could be a great way to maintain a relationship, but is it how we create one?

There is a difference between creating and maintaining a relationship, and especially when onboarding a new person or leader into your organization.  Creating is the intentional work of forging connections and establishing positive behaviors towards each other.  Maintaining is the work you do to make sure trust continues to exist and there is a pull (not a push) to stay connected in some way.

It is easy to call something a relationship.  Great relationships take some work.  Slow down and build first.  Summer is a good time to slow down and build.

By Scott

Just Add Joy – Just ask Rich Sheridan

A book that I really like right now is from Rich Sheridan, and it is called Joy, Inc.  How We Built a Workplace People Love.  Two reasons I like it.

  1. It is from a CEO/leader who built his business from scratch and he is intimately involved in his business.  99.9% of businesses in the United States are less than 500 people, and I love a leadership voice from the leader that most people can identify with.  Rich is CEO of Menlo Innovations.
  2. It reintroduces emotions into the conversation, not just theories and actions.  Joy, Love, Excitement, Jubilation – – – we need more of these things.  When our professional reputations, paychecks, support network, friends are all tied into our jobs, and 8.4 million of those jobs disappear in an economic downturn, there is a lot of anger, frustration, sadness, worry, fear, and hunger to overshadow the feelings that great cultures are built on.  Leaders cannot make other people feel better.  But here is one leaders journey to building a company around a culture.

Rich was our guest speaker at our local chamber breakfast this week, and I had the pleasure of introducing him.  I have toured his business, Menlo Innovations, several times (the give public tours to see their culture up close), we share a mentor/friend,  and I invited him to speak because my community/state needed to hear his message.

In talking with Rich, he shared one big question he gets from business owners:- “Great message Rich.  But where do I start?”  As a preview, here is what Rich says:

Try Small, Simple Experiments:  To jump-start the exploration of joy in your own workplace, surprise your team with some simple experiments. Here are a few you might consider. They won’t cost anything.

The two experiments he recommends are:

  1. Where do you sit?  If you are in an office, move out and near your people.
  2. Try a stand-up meeting for a week:  He describes a daily Menlo meeting that is quick, effective, and done standing up.

Finally, he invites everyone to visit Menlo and see the culture in person.  If you are looking for a speaker on leadership in your community that will talk about culture I recommend Rich.  He has a great story.

If you are looking for a good outing for your leadership team and you can get to Ann Arbor – I recommend going to visit to help you start your own conversation around culture.

#joymatters

By Scott

4 Words That Frame the Succession Conversation, 2 Tips to Reframe it

Great conversations start with a question.  A question I asked to a group recently during a keynote was What one word comes to mind when you think of succession planning?   The answers tell a pretty clear story – it is hard, it carries with it a message that we do it when we are old, and it is a future thing.

I agree with two of the issues highlighted:  It is challenging and it is future focused.

Succession_Wordsthatcometomind

The two pieces I would like to reframe for a more effective conversations are old and training.

  1. Old to Valued:  The #1 reason we do not do this – getting old is hard and minimizing people by not respecting their value will start a fight.  How many of us are at our best if we feel  we are no longer needed?  To have a different conversation, we must first reframe the conversation into key people/key roles.  People discussed in these conversation provide great value to the organization, and most would agree that the ongoing success of the organization is important.   Talking about valued people sends two messages:  You are important to our business and it is important that our business continues to be successful.  I am glad the age piece gets put on the table so it can be addressed directly.  Perception is reality, and this one will never go away as long as people are getting older and younger people are working with them and looking for opportunities.  We quiet this conversation when we make it safe to express changing life priorities and continue to focus on performance with development/support.
  2. Training to Development:  90% of development happens outside a classroom.  A message I share is most training returns nothing to the organization.  What this conversation provides for people is direction for development activities that will increase their capacity to lead in the future – both real skills/experiences for them and perceived capacity for the leaders that will be making decisions on their next move.  Capacity is the key word, and it is what your best people want.  Assignments that challenge them and show them they are valued.

A final pitch for One-on-Ones.  When we are continuing to have conversations with people and supporting them in their work it is like making deposits into a Trust account.  Each time we show people they matter and we care (by meeting with them, listening, and supporting) we build trust.  When we ask the question of someone 50+, what are your 1-2 year plans and 3-5 year plans we will need to draw on that trust to have an honest conversation.

Go build some trust, and go have some honest conversations, that lead to thoughtful actions and improved performance.