Tag: Management

Exit Interviews – 1 Question Leaders Should Ask
By Scott

Exit Interviews – 1 Question Leaders Should Ask

I make it a point to partner with leaders I respect and admire. It’s important to be around people that push you to become a better version of yourself.

In a recent Leaderwork program session I attended, we covered the topic of ‘Develop People’ which follows a defined process to select, recruit, onboard, and develop your people. In the conversation about exit interviews, a seasoned CEO shared the one question he wants to ask everyone who leaves his organization:

When did you first think about leaving?

He went on to explain why: that this question takes people back to the moment when they made the decision and therefore helps him understand the things that need to change in order to manage these moments that happen for everyone. It is the gap between this moment and the day they told people they were leaving that needs to be examined.

Great conversations start with a question, and seasoned people-centered leaders have lots of great ones that should be part of your organizational scripts.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

Help is Not a 4 Letter Word
By Scott

Help is Not a 4 Letter Word

How well do you ask for help? If we did a word association right now and I said the word help, what would be the first 5 words that come to mind?

I work a lot with leadership teams that are full of achievement minded, smart, goal oriented, and passionate leaders. One way I know the team is working is when I see one of those leaders openly admit they are stuck and ask for some time with the team to talk through the issue and help them get unstuck. I also watch for avoiding it, and if I see it I will make sure it gets named and talked about. It is when my job of helping teams have a productive conversation gets tough, and yet it is in these conversations that leaders are made and teams get healthy.

One of my 2018 summer reading list for leaders, I recommended Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. In this book, they share a model called the Ring Theory by Susan Silk. It is a graphic representation of the rolls of different groups around a situation that generates trauma. The use is pretty simple, those closest or most impacted by the trauma go in the middle, and each ring contains the names of individuals or groups impacted by the trauma. The farther you are from the middle, the less impact it has on you emotionally. In Sandberg’s situation with the death of her husband, she put her children in the middle, herself and his parents/siblings in the next ring, and then different groups after that. The tool is simple, create the ring and comfort in, dump out. Dumping is unloading the emotions the situations is causing and/or asking or accepting help from those that are in outer rings.

The Ring Theory by Susan Silk

The lesson for leaders, when you drive change or have to react to change the market exerts on your organization, it is often helpful to look at it through the lens of the Ring Theory because of the emotions that are generated.  Have you ever been in one of these conversations:

  1. Restructuring a team due to growth, resulting in dividing up teams and changing leaders around
  2. Firing a well liked person
  3. Firing someone you hired, maybe a friend
  4. Trying to support someone who is going through one of the big three life stressors – death, divorce, job loss

All these situations, some sort of loss is created for people that requires work and time to heal before people can return to a a more normal state of productivity and joy. I have watched many leaders go through a similar situation in leading change, where they are focused in (their team members or teams), and not asking for help or accepting help. The Ring Theory is a reminder that those resistant forces often require us to dump out be seeking or accepting support from others.

The trick is, support in only works when people ask for or accept help. Effective leaders do it, and the rest treat help like a four letter word and avoid it at all costs, even though their need is obvious to all.

So let’s adjust the question: Do you act like HELP is a four letter word?

Lead well!

 

 

The Sweet Spot: How to find it for yourself
By Scott

The Sweet Spot: How to find it for yourself

Touring a garden recently with a master gardener (My Mom) and these words kept coming out of her mouth – they love it here. At the nursery last week, another seasoned gardener talked about healthy places for certain trees. Both of these experts taught me the same lesson, to always look for vibrant signs of health – growth, healthy color, and a full look. Life through the eyes of a gardener gave me a different view of the world around me.

It hit me that same view can be taken with people. That place where we are comfortable, happy, challenged, and energized is a great place to be. What words would you use to describe yourself in that spot?

  • Energized
  • Creative
  • Confident
  • Collaborative
  • Positive

This is our sweet spot. The ultimate trick is not knowing how to find this spot, but how to realize when we get there and how to return to it.

Some leaders can see it, just like the master gardeners can see when a plant is in the optimal spot for growth and performance. Most of us need help from people to tell us where that spot is, and maybe a little more help to stay on track making the moves necessary for all people on our team to be in their sweet spot. Imagine if we could coach our team so each individual knew where that spot was for themselves, and were driven to continually improve and increase their understanding of their own sweet spot?

Maturity is simply the knowledge to know where your spot is, the patience to work toward it, and the ability to make the shifts to perform at a high level even if you are not in the exact sweet spot. Mature does not equal old, it just means wise.

Leaders need to know their own sweet spot and surround themselves with people who can handle the critical work outside of that spot. Great leaders also know how to develop the wisdom in others to replicate that sweet spot for themselves at all levels of the organization. Imagine being surrounded by a dozen people who feel energized, creative, confident, collaborative, and positive? Even an amateur gardener like me could spot that team.

There is nothing better than to watch your kids, your friends, your team, or yourself perform in that sweet spot!

Anybody told you lately, “I can tell that you like it here…”? If not, it is time to get to work finding it.

Three great resources to help your thinking:

Master gardeners don’t just work with plants.

Lead well . . .

Leadership Wisdom 101: Developing Your Capacity to Lead Change (Part 2 of 3)
By Scott

Leadership Wisdom 101: Developing Your Capacity to Lead Change (Part 2 of 3)

What is the biggest change you have ever experienced in life and how well did you lead through it?

How long did it take you to move from ‘the fog’ that overtakes you in a big change to a place where you could see new opportunities?

I believe transitions are the single biggest place for growth and pain. It is also the place where big personal changes provide us an opportunity to develop the wisdom and experience that translates back into our ability to lead change at work. The researchers call this resilience. The regular word we use in daily conversation is wisdom. Here are two lenses to help you develop the capacity to lead change. Next time you hit a change of any sort, use one of these to reflect, act, and grow.

Lens #1: William Bridges – This model is presented in more detail in his book, Transitions, and is a powerful lens through which to see our personal transitions in a different way. I have used it extensively with people in career transitions or any other job-related change. It is based on a recognition that in personal changes we need to let go of things (Endings) before we can see our situation in a new way (Neutral Zone). In the Neutral Zone, painful and confusing feelings still exist (emptiness, confusion, alone-ness) until we actively begin to try new things, which ultimately move us to a New Start. Yes, we do slide back, and in highly complex changes, multiple endings emerge that force us to retrace our steps. Here is a real example of how the model plays out in a career change:

It was the first day of our 3-month career transition program. During the check-in, she talked about how she was a teacher, and the idea of leaving her profession made her feel guilty for abandoning her kids and losing her summers. (Can you hear the endings in those statements?)  After a few classes and different exercises, she shared that she was beginning to see herself as someone who had a passion for helping people, and was skilled at using learning to assist people to grow and contribute more in their work. She was also wondering where that fit in the business world? Admittedly, she was still feeling anxious about actually working in a business. (Can you hear the neutral zone clues?) In our last conversation, she was two weeks into an internship with a business helping them pull together customer training for a new product they were launching. She was excited about the realization that learning for adults was like the hands-on/experiential approach she used in her classes. She was also excited about how quickly the learning showed up in performance. Having the summer off was still something she was not sure she wanted to give up.

Lens #2: 3 Ps by Martin Seligman – In her book Option B, Sheryl Sandberg shares a model explaining the barriers to personal recovery in life events. If you don’t know her story, Sandberg is the COO at Facebook and lost her husband from a heart attack a couple of years ago. Here are the 3 Ps that stunt personal recovery from events in our lives:

  1. Personalization – The belief we are at fault.
  2. Pervasiveness – The belief that an event will affect all areas of our life.
  3. Permanence – The belief that the aftershocks of an event will last forever.

Studies have shown that adults and children will recover more quickly when they realize it was not their fault, begin to see the positives in other aspects of their life that were not taken away by the event, and begin to see improvement and healing through the gift of time.

While the Seligman 3 P model is generally applied to big life events like death, divorce, job loss, or abuse, can you hear the similarities with what Bridges shares? For those of you that have navigated such a life event, how has that translated back into how you lead others?

Change will happen inside and outside of work, and each event is an opportunity to develop the personal ability to navigate those changes, which becomes the foundation for all of us to be great leaders of change.

For leaders, here are the three truths that you need to take into any change conversation:

  1. It is a studied process, so rely on a model to plan the change.
  2. It takes time, so the sooner you start planning, the better.
  3. You cannot control how people react, but you can control creating conditions where people feel supported/safe and are invited to take the next step in change.

The #1 reason leaders struggle with change is because they cannot control the choices others make. The #2 reason they struggle with change is because they have not allowed people the time they need to process change, especially the big ones.

The third issue that trips up leaders in navigating change is that it requires the help of others. In the next post, we will explore what I call The Power of 2.

Download a free one-pager on change. It includes the Bridges model, and also an additional tool that works well with planning organizational changes from Scott & Jaffe.

Lead well!

The Importance of Clarity + 2 Tips for your Organization
By Scott

The Importance of Clarity + 2 Tips for your Organization

I had a clarity issue in my recent trip to Italy to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. We only spoke English and all the people we met only spoke Italian. In hindsight, the celebratory dance I did when we were able to get the grocery store owner to realize we were looking for eggs (fyi: uovo in Italian) would probably be embarrassing if it was released to YouTube.

It is impossible to have clarity if we speak different languages, and the irony is each day we go to work and find places where clarity issues exist between people who speak the SAME base language. Some examples:

  • Engineering talking to sales
  • Leadership reporting financials to everyone
  • Accounting communicating to anyone

We have all experienced it, and the irony is that it is always the other person’s fault. One of the reasons every leadership program has a piece on communication styles – using a tool like DiSC or BEST – is because we need a lens to see these moments differently so we can step back and ask, “What can I do to communicate more effectively?”

The place I encourage you to start is with your words. For leaders, I see a huge opportunity to standardize how you talk about the priorities in your business.

I use a methodology called EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System®) with my clients for strategic planning. It is very clear around setting terms for priorities and commitments we make:

  • To Do: less than 7 days to complete (single owner)
  • Rocks: less than 90 days to complete (single owner)
  • Goals: 1 year to complete (owner is leadership team, or whatever team commits to doing it)

Even with these terms defined, leaders still come back and talk about goals the team set for this quarter or tactics for 2017. It is a simple concept, and yet not that easy to do.

Here are two tips for creating clarity around your plan and priorities:

  1. Commit to the same language: I can help you start this with my ebook Demystifying Strategic Planning (free on Kindle). This simple step will have a huge impact on your ability to create clarity at all levels of your organization. Also, remember that things have to be communicated 7 times before they are retained – so the roll-out is a journey, and not just an email or single all-employee meeting.
  2. Write things down on a single page: The spoken word does not create clarity. The written word does not, by itself, create clarity. But writing it down will help drive a more productive clarity conversation so you will get there faster.

Listen . . Lead. Repeat often!

The Trust Bank: 9 Habits That Make Deposits
By Scott

The Trust Bank: 9 Habits That Make Deposits

As leaders, we all have moments when decisions must be made that cannot be fully explained to the organization. Sometimes even your team has to be kept in the dark as to the full truth. Some of these moments include:

  • Firing someone for criminal acts at work
  • Reducing your team by 10%, including the two nicest and most liked people in the department
  • Asking an under-performing and extremely good person to resign in 45 days
  • Negotiating a sale of the company
  • Reassigning a leader due to allegations for certain behavior
  • Firing an executive for performance issues

I remember a conversation with a leader about the impact of one of these big decisions, on both his people and the trust within his team. He had just let someone go and nobody could know the truth. It was immediate, and it was explained by a vague email. I shared with him a perspective I learned in watching trust shifts after these BIG events: in my experience, these events did not alter the trust level because it was the thousand decisions we had made up to the event that made forgiveness easier.  Trust was kind of like a bank account. If the deposits had been made along the way, then the effects of the one big withdrawal were minimal.

Leaders make these little deposits when they:

  1. Tell people the real business numbers when sales records are hit and missed
  2. Publicly apologize for a bad decision that made life harder
  3. Show up at potlucks
  4. Go to funerals, weddings, and other big events in people’s lives
  5. Send a note after seeing someone’s child recognized in the paper
  6. Ask questions about family – and remember their names
  7. Have monthly breakfasts with people where any question is answered
  8. Answer emails from employees that send questions
  9. Embrace policies that make a positive impact on the lives of people

The good news? Big events don’t happen that often. The better news? They will pass faster if you spend the time between them being open and honest with your people, and practicing some of the habits mentioned above.

Just remember – focus each day on telling and hearing the TRUth and building/giving TRUst.

For EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System®) leaders, at your next clarity break tally all the ‘deposits’ you made this week and pick one thing you can do tomorrow to make a deposit.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often.

5 Powerful Questions for New Leaders & 1 Habit to Maintain Traction: Guest Post by David C. Baker
By Scott

5 Powerful Questions for New Leaders & 1 Habit to Maintain Traction: Guest Post by David C. Baker

Today’s guest blogger is David C. Baker. I met David when I first started my business, through a contact from his publisher during the launch of his book, Managing (Right) for the First Time. I was drawn to his book because I believe managing leadership transitions is one of the keys to success. I read his book cover to cover and helped distribute 24 signed copies to many of you. Of all the books I have shared with clients (over 200 to date), David’s is by far the one I get the most comments back from people about being helpful because it is so practical.

The following content is the property of David C. Baker and is shared on this blog with his full approval. Any reproduction or use of this material without his consent is not lawful. If you like it and want to use it somewhere else, just ask him directly using the link at the bottom of the post.

You haven’t noticed yet, but there are several little red light points on your chest. And no, it’s not because the neighbor kid is playing with the slide presentation pointer that fell out of your briefcase last night when you stumbled home, finally, after a hard day at work. It’s more that you’re in the cross hairs of one or more people who are watching very carefully how you react in the next few weeks.

You’ve crossed a threshold, see, by either managing people for the first time, or trying to do it right for the first time. This is your chance. You’ve experienced a seminal event in your life by entering the “management” room that you’ve only heard of in the past. You’ve criticized the people who have occupied this room without ever knowing what it was really like to be in their shoes.

Now you get to find out, and you get to do it better. Are you ready? Have you been paying attention? Do you understand the minuses that will come with the pluses? It’s a wonderful journey, but it’s not without difficulty.

I can’t remember much about the first time I managed people. Maybe for you it was like my experience, a more gradual transition in that I was managing them in reality long before I was managing them officially, and being promoted was more about recognizing what was already taking place. That’s probably the best way for it to happen.

But I probably don’t remember that first time simply because our culture doesn’t value management all that highly. You don’t read about great managers like you read about great athletes, and so we aren’t accustomed to thinking of the entry to management as some sort of anniversary.

It is, though, because it changes your life. It may not change your life to the same extent that childbirth, marriage, divorce, or death will change your life, but it certainly sets a course with all sorts of implications for your life.

This is a change, and how you react to it will affect your happiness, relationships, health, and wealth. It will also have a strong impact on the people you manage.

You do realize that, right? Twenty years from now, let me sit down with one of your current clients and ask them about you, your impact, and what they learned. Chances are they won’t even be able to dredge a name out of their murky memories. The same is true of your vendors.

But let me do that with one of your current employees in twenty years and they’ll remember you for sure. Hopefully it’ll be for the right reasons, and that’s the opportunity that is in front of you.

Seeing the opportunity is the first step. The next is step back to think about the situation you are stepping into and setting your sights on the impact you want to have. Here are 5 key questions every new leader should ask:

  1. What were the reasons you were chosen for this role?
  2. What are the expectations for you for the first 6 months?
  3. What does your team believe are your key responsibilities?
  4. In 20 years, what do you want others to be saying about you as a leader?
  5. For each item in #4, write 1 or 2 things you commit to doing that will be your first steps towards your leadership legacy?

Key action to maintain momentum: Over your first 6 months, look back at your answers to the previous five questions weekly and think about your progress. If you are brave, get feedback on #2 and #3 from your leader or team. Then weekly ask yourself the questions:

  1. What do I commit to KEEP doing in the next week?
  2. What do I commit to START or STOP doing to improve my effectiveness as a leader?

Did David’s words and wisdom resonate with your leadership role? Visit David’s website or email David directly at david@recourses.com. Here are some additional links to his books:

The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth

Financial Management of a Marketing Firm

Managing (Right) for the First Time: A Field Guide For Doing It Well

Guest Post: Blue Collar Scholar, Jim Bohn – What is our Organizational Level Engagement?
By Scott

Guest Post: Blue Collar Scholar, Jim Bohn – What is our Organizational Level Engagement?

Today’s guest blogger is Jim Bohn. Jim spent a career helping leaders and organizations do the work of successful change. I was connected to Jim when he stepped out of his corporate role and was answering the question, “What is the next journey for me?” I have followed his journey through his powerful articles on LinkedIn and have been impressed with the wisdom he continues to share around change and helping organizations build and sustain a healthy culture. Jim also calls himself the ‘Blue Collar Scholar’, which captures the essence of his wisdom for me. Leaders need to think about what they need to accomplish, and then they must roll-up their sleeves and do the work. I am grateful to Jim for sharing his wisdom today.

The following content is the property of Jim Bohn and is shared on this blog with his full approval. Any reproduction or use of this material without his consent is not lawful. If you like it and want to use it somewhere else, just ask him directly using the link at the bottom of the post. Also included at the end are some free resources for those of you that want to learn more.

Key question for leaders to answer: What is our Organizational Level Engagement?

Employee engagement has been around for over 20 years.  If we are honest with ourselves, we know employee engagement is now part of the routine and does not hold the prestige and impact it once held. So, as an executive, have you thought beyond employee engagement to organizational level engagement?  If your water coolers could talk, what would they tell you about the conversations your employees have when they talk about your organization?

 Key question: What is Organizational Level Engagement?

Organizations high in engagement demonstrate many of the following characteristics:

  1. A high degree of morale, specifically a desire to be at work and a desire to do work on behalf of the organization.
  2. Enthusiastic workers who want to be part of an organization.
  3. Workers willing to take on complex challenges.
  4. Workers who believe they are stronger than their competition.
  5. A track record of accomplishments.
  6. Evidence of innovation.
  7. Data and knowledge sharing.
  8. Increased speed and quality of decision-making.
  9. Effective conflict management.

It focuses on “We” not “Me”

While acknowledging that the individual is important, organizational level engagement focuses at the organizational level.  It does not dismiss the value of the individual, but acknowledges the critical nature of organizational level performance.  It focuses on how people work together across an organization to accomplish outcomes.

As an executive, you’re likely to respond: “Well, we have our financial performance metrics to tell us how we’re doing as an organization.”  True – – – but that answer is not sufficient.  Financial metrics only tell one part of the tale.  Organization Level Engagement is about how the organization is performing from a people perspective.

For example, all organizations have ‘silos’, groups of people who do not work together.  Organizational level engagement discovers pockets of silos allowing managers and leaders to improve how groups work together, sharing data and improving decision making processes.

Do your people know the mission of your organization?  Merely repeating the mission by rote does not mean they have integrated the mission of your organization with their daily work behavior.  Do your people work together?  Do they make effective decisions by considering others who may be impacted by new strategies?

The following chart describes the differences between employee engagement and organizational level engagement.

Employee Engagement Organization Level Engagement
Focused exclusively on what employees derive from the organization Focused on what the organization derives from all employees working together
Focused on individual motivation – what’s in it for me? Focused on organizational level motivation – what’s in it for us?
Focused on ‘local’ issues such as environment, pay and benefits Focused on organizational level outputs such as customer satisfaction, data quality, and leader effectiveness across groups.
Focused on the leader the individual works with each day Focused on how all leaders work together each day and throughout the year
Focused on “Me” Focused on “We”

 Senior executives should ask, at the beginning of every fiscal year, during a fresh start:

  • How well do we work together as an organization?
  • Do our people truly know the goals of this organization?
  • Are we (leadership team) setting an example of decision making and cooperation at the top?
  • How sharply are we focusing our efforts on things that really matter and jettisoning things that are a waste of time?

Senior HR people should ask:

  • What are we doing to help people across our organization work together better?
  • How are we training our people to share data and make better, high quality decisions with the organization in mind?
  • What are we doing to help our teams become more resilient in the face of project setbacks?

Employee survey or in a small group conversation, leaders should ask (and record to evaluate trends across the organization):

  • What prevents our teams from working together?
  • How can we help our employees understand where they fit into the overall mission of the organization?
  • What one thing do we need to improve at the organizational level to perform at a higher level? (Expect some to say, “pay increases” but look for other trends such as restructuring to improve communication pathways.)

*Jim has published his research in this area and his Bohn Organizational Efficacy Scale is part of that research. If you want to learn more about his research and survey please contact him directly.

By taking this important step and investigating organizational level engagement, you will improve the effectiveness of your organization, leading to increased profitability and improved employee satisfaction.

Did Jim’s words and wisdom resonate with some of the challenges you are feeling in your organization? As you come up on your yearly planning, would you like your leadership team to spend some time on some of these critical questions, and use the answers to listen and act differently in 2018? Visit Jim’s website or email Jim directly at james.bohn@att.net. Here are some other resources to take a deeper dive into this topic:

Architects of Change: Practical Tools to Build, Lead and Sustain Organizational Initiatives by Jim Bohn, Ph.D.

The Nuts and Bolts of Leadership: Getting the Job Done by Jim Bohn, Ph.D.

LinkedIn: What makes an organization tick? Employee engagement is not the answer (1 of 173 articles Jim has shared on LinkedIn)

 

10 Daily Questions to Assess and Reset Your WORK as a Leader
By Scott

10 Daily Questions to Assess and Reset Your WORK as a Leader

Today’s guest blogger is Paul Doyle. Paul is an accomplished CEO and has a great passion for developing leaders. I asked Paul to contribute to this series because his advice is both practical and powerful. His focus is equipping leaders with skills they can use tomorrow. The ten powerful questions he shares are connected to the LeaderWork 10, and are the foundation of a ten-month leadership program that I collaborate with Paul to deliver. We just celebrated our third cohort graduation, and I have seen firsthand the impact these questions have on leaders that use them. Paul shares the habit that has enabled him to lead large, small, and medium-sized growing businesses and keep his actions and beliefs aligned amidst the chaos so his team could be successful.

The following content is the property of Paul Doyle and Leaderwork LLC and is shared on this blog with his full approval. Any reproduction or use of this material without his consent is not lawful. If you like it and want to use it somewhere else, just ask him directly using the link at the bottom of the post.

I’ve always viewed my responsibility as a leader is to create the environment in which others can achieve. Over the years, I have developed a list of questions that I ask myself at the end of each day (or at least I try to).  In working through the daily set of challenges, changes, and chaos that is the life of every leader, this list has served as a check list to remind me of the work I should be doing as a leader.

Q1:  Does my team know I am here for them? It is my responsibility to serve; know them, listen, support, coach, and help them.

Q2:  Is my team inspired by a vision for their work? A cool and challenging purpose will pull effort from people. Clarity about the finish line will allow them to self-manage to a great extent.

Q3:  Do the team members care about each other’s success?  Do they have a shared fate? Are they working as a true team, not just a group of people reporting to me?

Q4:  Is the work and the methods of working bringing out my team’s best effort?  I can’t motivate anyone, that comes from inside, fear can come from outside, but it doesn’t last. Is every member of the team doing work they know and feel is important and are they clear they have the opportunity and freedom to affect how the work is done?

Q5:  Does every member of the team know, all the time, if they are winning or losing?  A scoreboard is a powerful tool. People want to be successful and when performance data is available most people use it to make things better.

Q6: Is the work organized such that it is easier for the team to succeed than to fail? My team needs the work to be structured and supported in ways that help them be productive. They want good tools, good information, a good plan, and good support.

Q7: Does each member of my team know their priorities?  People prefer to be goal directed not just busy.  People like the comfort from knowing they are working on the right things. It is my responsibility to provide a plan and communicate a set of priorities, so team members can get after it and feel confident that their work matters.

Q8: Is my team well informed? Communication, both inside the team and in the company, is critical for people to make a connection. People are more loyal, productive, and creative when they know what is going on.  I need to connect team mates to one another and connect each team member to the company overall.

Q9: Have I challenged each team member to grow and learn more?  People must continue to learn more every day so they can do a better job and most people want to continue to learn so they can get a better job. I am responsible to guide both questions for all team members.

Q10: Does every team member feel the creative tension to do better? Continuous improvement is not an option. Whatever we are doing today will be done better tomorrow by someone.  If it is us – we win. If it is not us, we could be out of work.  My team needs to feel that stretch.

Thinking through the list at the end of each day usually results in me realizing that some individual needs help in an area, and sometimes it reminds me that there is a big omission.  Either way, a daily run through these questions helps me break out of the chaos and stay on top of what is my most significant responsibility – that is the work of leading.

 

Did Paul’s words and the questions he asks himself daily resonate with you? Learn more about the LeaderWork leadership development program by visiting the LeaderWork website or emailing Paul directly at paul.doyle@leader-work.com.

Two questions to assess mindset; One question to invite a shift
By Scott

Two questions to assess mindset; One question to invite a shift

We were ending our day, and I used a tool from the Entrepreneurial Operating System® to get feedback about our time together and actions to improve it for the next group. The simple question was:

How would you rate our time together from 1 (not valuable) to 10 (extremely valuable)?

When we got to Eric, he said 7.5.  My follow-up question is standard, “Thanks for the feedback Eric. What could be done to make it an 8.5?” His response was quick, “I have been to a lot of these types of sessions and they can never be above a 7.5.”

In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, author Carol Dweck shares her research that has identified fixed and growth mindsets. A fixed-mindset person is focused on looking good and proving their worth with effort. They excel at protecting and criticizing. A growth-mindset person is someone who sees potential as something that continues to be stretched and grown through challenges, learning through the difficult journey of delivering on a commitment. This person perceives a negative outcome as the first step to doing it better next time.

If you want to grow as an organization, fixed-mindset thinkers will be like an anchor to your ideas. It is a key leadership skill to accurately assess the mindset of your team. I use these two questions on the back of my team member fact sheet to help provide a glimpse into their mindset:

  1. What is the biggest behavioral change you ever made?
  2. What is the biggest mistake you have ever made and what did it teach you?

These are hard questions, but a growth-mindset person will appreciate the challenge. In my experience, a fixed-mindset person will either not answer or create a  diversion through sarcasm or anger/frustration to allow the question to move on without providing a thoughtful answer.

The next key leadership skill is inviting a shift (fixed-mindset) or increasing the wisdom within the team (growth-mindset). Here is the question to invite that shift and increase the team wisdom:

  1. What wisdom would you be willing to share from that experience to help all of us get a little wiser?

Fixed-mindset people focus on protecting and proving, which ends up making them largely inward focused in their work. It is especially important in EOS® (Entrepreneurial Operating System®) companies to limit or eliminate fixed-mindset thinkers. Traction requires a growth-mindset.

Do you have any on your team?

What is your mindset?

My final point is that fixed-mindset is not equal to bad/mean person. Eric and I had a great conversation after the day together because we shared some professional experiences, and I found him easy to talk with. But if I am charged with growing or improving an organization, it is critical to have people who get excited about continuously improving work and creating stretch goals. The teams will be more successful without the Eric’s of the world.

What questions would you ask?

Tip: Read trUTips #8 to read about how to handle B players (or in this case, a B-player)