Tag: keynote speaking

By Scott

Jackhammers and Leadership

I learned a very valuable leadership lesson when I was 19.  I was working as a laborer on a curb repair crew for the summer.  Part of the job was breaking up the old curbs using a jackhammer.  I remember the first time I was asked to operate it I was very excited – it was loud, dirty, and made me feel very manly.  I received the instructions from my crew chief, and off I went to break up 100ft of curb.  After 5 minutes I started to feel weak and I was sweating profusely.  After 10 minutes I was light headed and almost ready to throw up when I had to stop. It was then I noticed the whole crew standing back laughing at me as they saw the fatigue and nausea overtake me.  When I shut the jackhammer off, my crew chief came over and gave me my first leadership lesson.

“Kid, you have to learn to let the jackhammer do the work.  When you learn to work with it and not try and control it, then you really get work done.”

That summer I gradually learned to let the jackhammer do the work, and as I look back on that day, I realize how it was a lesson for every important role I would ever have – leader, husband, parent, friend, and facilitator.

As I work with new leaders – The biggest mistake I see new leaders make is to over-manage their teams and not focus on setting clear goals and working to remove the things that are getting in the way of their people.  Leadership is exhausting if you opt for total control vs working with it.

As I lead entrepreneurs and their leadership teams through a process to build a strategy and culture focused on performance – I have to stand back and let them work through the change, learn what works for them, and struggle with growing up as a team.  They have to delegate the work that will allow them to lead more effectively.  I have to be patient and persistent.  If either of us tries to do too much for others, it will exhaust us and the effort will not be successful.

In my work as a coach – If I go into a coaching session trying to guess the answers ahead of time and force knowledge into my coachee – it is exhausting.  When I go in with the intent of being present and working through the process of coaching with a coachee, they leave with the strength of conviction and ownership, and I leave amazed at the work that gets done when I am present and allow space for exploration.

As a parent of teenagers – If I go into conversations armed with the intent that I will convince them they are wrong and I am right, it usually ends with tears and loud voices.  If I am patient and work on listening and drawing out what is on their mind and gather their reflections on the event, it does not alway end in a hug with music playing in the background, but it generally ends with energy in reserve for us to work on the next challenge or to celebrate the next victory.

Kid, you have to let the jackhammer do the work.  Leader, you have to let your people do the work.

Coach/Leader, you have to listen well and draw out the reality and possibilities from your partners in performance.

Dad, you have to let your daughter grow up a little, and feel loved on their journey.

Friend, sometimes you just have to sit there and listen, because you can’t cure the cancer, fix the marriage, or bring their child back to life.

What are you challenged with today that you have to learn to let the jackhammer do the work?

Lead well – in whatever role you take on today.

By Scott

The Impact of Values, and 3 Things You HAVE to do with them

I have a client who sent me a late night text showing me a picture of the executive team dressed as superheros.  I am sharing the picture because I like to celebrate when business leaders show such passion for their work, and have fun in front of and with their people – They also told me I could.  The story behind this moment is almost 18 months of trying to capture what they value as an organization, before growth challenges them with diluting what matters because nobody has taken the time to put a stake in the ground and define it.  The journey to this point is a story that would need many more words than I like to commit to my daily postings to do it justice, so I will just share the outcome of their work.  Here are their values:Worksighted Team

  • I am most comfortable dressed as a Superhero
  • I am a unique piece to the puzzle
  • I focus on today, but dream of tomorrow
  • I scoop my dog’s poop

Any company, but especially my high growth partners/clients, need to write these down, but that is only the beginning of the journey.  In Good to Great, Jim Collins shares the three things about values that he found in great companies.  In great companies, they do three things with their values:

  1. Define Them/Know what they are
  2. Build them into the organization
  3. Preserve them over time

The truth around values is this picture is part of step 1.  There is work to be done, but great companies know that celebrations have to happen to name significant steps that they have taken.  Celebrations mean FUN and showing up as people who passionately believe in the words being shared, not just leaders reading the script they were given.  This group of leaders inspires me.

What are some of the unique and inspiring values that you have seen companies share and build into their culture?

By Scott

The Smartest Person In The Room

Have you ever met the smartest person in the room?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to see Captain John Meier, the commanding officer of the Commanding Officer of the USS Gerald R. Ford.  He asked this question as he talked about steps he was taking to build the team that will launch this new aircraft carrier in 2016.  The one thing I will say about Captain Meier is that he spoke simply about leadership, and showed a deep understanding of the power of serving others first as a leader.  Another great thing is he was not selling a book, he was just taking time out of his busy day to tell his story.

How many of you walk into a room chanting “I am not the smartest person in this room . . . “?  I would never ask a leader to do that, and yet there are ways our actions can say it.

Captain Meier shared a couple of tips he had for living this mantra through your actions as a leader:

  • Always keep an open mind in problem solving sessions – challenge your team to bring/share solutions and just listen.
  • Make Learning a part of your day.

Imagine the power of spending time each day having someone on your team teach you something?  You implement Salesforce?  Ask someone to show you how to enter a new customer and then do 2 on your own with their help.  When we make a habit out of the two tips shared above we are demonstrating our intent to serve first as a leader.  It is never that easy, but it is always that simple.

Great conversations start with a question.  I spend time with leaders like Captain Meier because they ask great questions.

If you have never met the smartest person in the room you are not looking hard enough.

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

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

Just Add Fear – Is this a line in your Leadership Recipe?

Do you ever intentionally try and scare your people?  Is it a tool you use in your leadership toolbox?

Let me rephrase that:

  • Have you ever initiated changes without an adequate explanation  to anyone why the change is important?
  • Do you go long periods of time without bringing the team together to celebrate wins of the past and talk about what the focus is for the future?
  • Does your travel schedule dictate how often you bring your team together?
  • Do customer needs always trump team communication/gatherings?
  • Do you allow months to pass without giving people feedback on their work and asking what support they need?
  • Do you let people hole up in their cubicles and just work for hours/days on end?
  • Do you celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, births, and show up at funerals for your people and their families?

The hands on work of leaders, the habits we commit to say everything about our leadership.  Fear is like water, it always finds it’s way into where it should not be and the damage starts without us knowing about it.  Any builder will tell you that creating a 100% waterproof house is impossible, but building well and adequately venting things will help us avoid major damage.  My experience tells me in any new building you wait for the first heavy rain and watch closely for those things that are not built well.  Leaks will show up.  They are always there. Some tips – Don’t start with the question – What is everyone afraid of today?  Here are some questions that will help you watch for/listen for fear:

  • What questions are hanging out there that need answers?
  • What should be our top 3 priorities for the next 6 months?
  • Where are you making progress?  Where are you stuck?  What support do you need to get unstuck?

Listen for confusion or emotions that will distract from our ability to solve problems and work together.  Those are the slow leaks of fear filling up the space in our heads that we need to use for thinking and reasoning to do our best work. Great conversations start with a question.  When it works, we have honest conversations, leading to thoughtful actions, and improved performance.  Fear is always looking to creep in and it will, just develop the habits that does not allow it to stay for long. When we do it well, we allow fear a voice, and we create conditions that don’t allow it to stay long.

To build great culture you have to give fear a voice, and also not give it a place to stay.