Tag: professional development

The power of PAUSE: Two tips for practicing it today
By Scott

The power of PAUSE: Two tips for practicing it today

The summary of our coaching work told a powerful, yet simple, story. “Scott, the biggest impact our time had was to take a deep breath when things got heated and keep my emotions more level so the conversation could continue towards a mutually agreed upon solution.”  Breath = Pause. What situations do you get in where your emotion takes over and the pause button is needed for you to effectively manage your contribution to the conversation?

  • Parenting?
  • Home improvement project with your spouse?
  • Summer canoe trip where you are NOT in the back steering?
  • Riding a tandem bicycle where you ARE in the back and not steering?

The brain is actually wired to react first and think secondly; it is called the amygdala, which is at the base of the brain and controls the fight/flight response. It is supposed to kick in to keep you alive. When humans lived in caves and were outnumbered by animals big enough to eat them, it was critical for survival. Since we have moved into dwellings with locks and walls and work in offices, it is not as critical, but it is still there.

Seth Godin calls the amygdala the lizard brain, and says this in his book Linchpin:

The lizard brain is here to keep you alive, the rest of your brain merely makes you a happy, successful, connected member of society.

People-centered leaders still speak up and disagree, and the reason for having meetings with agendas and frequent one-on-ones with their people is to create space where disagreements can happen and be managed.

Here are two tips for practicing the pause:

  1. Bring water to the meeting and drink when you get irritated or feel the need to offer a quick rebuttle to a comment.
  2. Commit to using the comment “Tell me a little more about that?” at least once in your next meeting.

Where can you practice the pause today? When you practice the pause, how effective are you at restarting the conversation and channeling that emotion into a better solution to the issue you are addressing? When you fail at the pause, how quickly do you apologize and restart?

Listen . . Lead. Repeat often!

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!

Wanted: Passionate, Hope-Filled Leaders
By Scott

Wanted: Passionate, Hope-Filled Leaders

In the last three weeks, I have received two random requests for help from leadership teams. Have you ever been in a situation where you were asked to do something and you felt obligated to say yes? When a paying customer walks in, as a small business owner I am always looking for reasons to say yes. Here is my internal filter for requests, and since I use EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System®), it is called my Core Focus™:

Passion: Maximizing individual growth and eliminating needless pain – moving to and past the tipping point of success.

Niche: Organizations with passionate, hope-filled leaders who are over-challenged and under-supported.

In my last two posts about Give and Take by Adam Grant, I shared the research around being a giver and the core skills all givers need to develop to be more effective. A second way to look at the Core Focus™ is that it helps you negotiate more effectively and be intentional about building relationships with Givers/Matchers in your life, offering a tit-for-tat by thinking through the challenge being offered. (see post to understand these)

In your role, what is your Core Focus™ and does it align with what you do well?

For your team, what is your Core Focus™ and does everyone agree with it?

In the end, I said yes to each opportunity. Each team is going to start by generating absolute clarity in their roles, creating absolute clarity around what the team needs to accomplish, and having an open discussion around the right seat for those people taking on leadership roles. Inherent in each of these discussions is the question, “What support do you need from your leader? Your teammates?” For each team, I am asking for help from the leaders involved. Without their willingness to be 70%-90% transparent about their own Core Focus™ and life priorities, this process will only set them and the team up for short-term failure.

Do you know your own Core Focus™? (read my whitepaper if you need to think that through)

Does your team have a Core Focus™?

You can do work without one, but you can’t achieve healthy growth as an individual or organization without one. That is where my passion of eliminating needless pain comes in – which is one of the main reasons I looked these two clients in the eye and said yes. It is that simple, and I know the work will not be that easy. But if they help, and I bring my best, we can figure it out.

(Note: People-centered leaders work on this with their teams and themselves often!)

If you missed it – watch Simon Sinek’s TEDTalk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. Do you see the tie between why and Core Focus™?

3 Skills To Become a More Powerful Giver
By Scott

3 Skills To Become a More Powerful Giver

Powerful Giver? As I wrote it, the word oxymoron came to mind…

In my last post, I introduced you to Give and Take by Adam Grant and his presentation of the styles of giver, matcher, and taker. To conclude that givers will find more success is not accurate, because like any strength overused, it can become a weakness and negatively impact effectiveness. Here are the three traps for the giver style:

  • Too trusting
  • Too empathetic
  • Too timid

One of my favorite parts of Adam Grant’s book was his section on the learnings that will make givers more effective, based on the outcomes they and their businesses achieve.

Here they are:

  1. Sincerity screening: Givers need to keep trusting most of the people most of the time, and become skilled at recognizing fakers and takers. I am always looking for collaborators, and once I was connected with an individual with an idea and decided to partner with him to make the idea a reality. After four meetings a pattern emerged – we left every meeting with assignments, and every time we got back together he presented his work without ever asking for my input. Finally, after about 40 hours of work, I stopped following up with him and stepped away. He was a taker. I have learned to watch closely for someone to accept the ideas of others, as a test for recognizing fakers and takers. This is a key skill for givers, and I have learned it.
  2. Generous tit for tat: Givers do so without expecting anything back, and yet the strong empathy they possess can create a forgiving nature that gets in the way of accountability conversations. In this case, creating an environment where their roles and deliverables are clear is essential. This allows empathy (forgiveness) to be present, but it is balanced by clear expectations. Having clear deliverables helps temper the desire for endless second chances. It is one reason I love the EOS® (Entrepreneurial Operating System®) as a tool for leadership teams, because expectations stay clear.
  3. Learn to negotiate (assertiveness and advocacy paradox): Both this book and Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg share research that concludes women are less effective at negotiating than men, and this contributes to salary discrepancies with male counterparts. When you equip a giver with this skill, outcomes change. I am a giver, and recently two friends mentored me on my ability to negotiate project rates with clients. The simple skill we practiced together? State my normal rate – and stop talking. Seems simple, but I found myself trying to justify it or soften it because it felt awkward. The outcome? I am more assertive, and it increased my ability to get what I am worth. I still serve, and I do it more strategically and intentionally, instead of by accident.

Are you a giver? If you are (based on the assessment), which of these skills would make you more effective as a people-centered leader?

I believe that Learning + Doing  = Growth. Give and Take is a great book because it makes my value come alive, and this is a leadership lesson that will make you a more powerful giver.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

Are you a Giver or a Taker?
By Scott

Are you a Giver or a Taker?

Great conversations start with a question, so here is one:

In approaching relationships with others, are you more of a Giver or a Taker?

I look forward to asking a group this question; I imagine a room full of leaders, and my prediction is 70% would identify themselves as givers. After all the talk of servant leadership – and Jim Collins’ research shared in Good to Great that connects an organization’s success with the presence of a level 5 leader (his term for servant leader) – a majority of leaders would put their hands up because we all know what we ought to do.

I’ve just finished Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. He shares two lists of values that he uses in his research to help identify a primary style. He considers how an individual rates the importance of each of the following:

List 1

  • Wealth (money, material possessions)
  • Power (dominance, control over others)
  • Pleasure (enjoying life)
  • Winning (doing better than others)

List 2

  • Helpfulness (working for the well-being of others)
  • Responsibility (being dependable)
  • Social justice (caring for the disadvantaged)
  • Compassion (responding to the needs of others)

As you look at these lists, does it change how you would answer this question? In the last evaluation where you received feedback, which list did it point to?

The two books that stand out for me on this topic are The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership by James C. Hunter and The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann. While I loved both of these, the Adam Grant book I just finished stands out because of the academic approach the author takes in sharing the research behind givers and takers and, in the end, how he uses research to answer the question – Who achieves a higher level of performance and/or impact?

Of course he includes an assessment, with the option to get input from others. I scored a 66% Giver and 33% Taker on my self-assessment (Whew!). Now the hard-er part: asking others for their input. If you have seen my JoHari Window tutorial, this is the part where we ask for feedback to reveal blindspots. Look for that in another post . . .

So, are you a Giver or a Taker? Take 5 minutes to take the self-assessment.

People-centered leaders are not perfect, but they are purposeful about creating space where ‘List 2’ needs are mentioned and met.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

Final thought for EOS leaders – Look for a future post focused on the habits that are part of the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) and how leaders can make certain behaviors habits.

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!

Why learning TOGETHER is best – the data!
By Scott

Why learning TOGETHER is best – the data!

I recently shared My 7 Favorite Books for a Leadership Book Study Group – and something great happened. A conversation started with a leader who wanted to help me (and you) get smarter faster.
An organization called the NTL Institute published their findings on the average retention rate of different teaching methods.
Here is the data:
  • Lecture – 5%
  • Reading – 10%
  • Audio/Visual – 20%
  • Discussion Group – 50%
  • Practice by Doing – 75%
  • Teaching Others – 90%

In other words – you will only remember about 5% of what you learn by lecture, while a full 90% of information will be retained when you are teaching others!

Read my tips for making a book group a very effective learning method, and you will see the tie to discussion/practice/teaching that will move you quickly from 10% to 50%+.

Recently, a CEO I work with to deliver a learning program (Paul Doyle – Leaderwork) shared some information he read: the annual spend in the United States on leadership training is between $14 and $50 billion each year – and there are approximately 15 million people in leadership roles in the US. How many of you have been to programs that largely focus on reading and lecture? I have spent two decades in companies of various sizes/industries and my experience is that lecture/reading is the norm.

I know many of my readers are leaders looking for tips to develop themselves and their teams. Make it a goal in 2017 to push for more conversations, practice, and learning in groups – even if it means slowing down the process to practice and reflect.

Listen . . . Lead. Repeat often!

What’s your guarantee?
By Scott

What’s your guarantee?

Every business does not have a guarantee. But should you?

Less than half of all businesses have a guarantee, and when I work with EOS® clients this is hard for them to do, because once you say it people might use it. Here are some guarantees that came to mind for me:

  • USPS has a guarantee on overnight shipments
  • Buffalo Wild Wings has a 15-minutes or it is free for lunch
  • Our local running shop, Gazelles, will accept shoes for return after you run on them if they don’t fit right
  • Bob Goff gives his phone number at the end of his book, Love Does, and guarantees he will answer

I use a strategic planning system my business called the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®) that I also use the clients. EOS® has a guarantee I use for the rest of my business – No contracts/No pay guarantee: If our work together does not meet your expectations don’t pay me. If it does, pay me when we are done.

Here is the thing about guarantees:

  • They tell people what you are serious about
  • The commitments make you better at what you do because you focus on meeting that pledge
  • It provides immediate feedback for something you need to fix

My personal experience is that I am focused on preparing with my client for planning sessions because bringing value for them is my guarantee, and it takes work. But it is work that I believe in, and making it fundamentally makes me work at improving my capacity to deliver excellence every time I work.

I think it is a question I will start asking all leaders – What do you guarantee to your team? Your peers? Your leader?

What are you willing to guarantee?

fyi – I called Bob Goff and he picked up. 🙂

Tip: Instead of asking your people what their guarantee is, ask:

  • What are the communication standards that guide you? (answer in terms of preferred method and timing of responses)  
  • When I work with you how will I know it is going well?
  • How will I know if it is not going well?

Imagine the power of everyone on the team answering these, putting them on the wall, and then determining a standard for working together? That is a guarantee.

 

 

 

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:

 

Will you be my mentor? 4 Steps to make this effective.
By Scott

Will you be my mentor? 4 Steps to make this effective.

I was talking to a group of graduate students and the question was asked, “What advice would you give to someone about finding a mentor?”

I asked the follow-up question, “How many of you have ever had a mentor?” 

Less than half of the hands went up. So I started at the beginning because, from my experience in working with learners of all ages, I knew most of them (even the ones with their hands up) were missing some key knowledge they needed to create a great mentoring experience.

Mentoring is a personal growth and development strategy where a mentor supports the mentee by sharing resources, expertise, values, skills, perspectives, attitudes, and proficiencies.

 

The short version –

Mentoring is finding someone smarter than you and learning from them so you get smarter faster.

 

As I work with leaders of high growth companies, I encourage them to find people who have faced the same challenges they have faced and learn from them. I do this because as a consultant and coach, I need them to own their development and find people to help accelerate their development.

I believe that in growth transitions (double-digit growth or moving into a new leadership role), there is tremendous opportunity for growth and tremendous risk. Having a support team around you in those transitions that is focused on your development is critical. I am confident in what I can do as a coach or consultant, and I also know I cannot do it all. Encouraging mentors is my way of asking for help without eroding their confidence in me as a consultant and coach.

Here are the 4 Steps for creating a positive and productive mentoring experience:

  1. Identify what you are trying to learn or what problem you need help solving.
  2. Do some research: Who do you know that has the knowledge or experience that you are seeking?
  3. Determine who is the best fit and how long you think it will take to meet your objectives.
  4. Make the ask by reaching out (or being introduced); be ready to provide this information:
    • What input/expertise are you looking for?
    • Why are you asking them?
    • What is the time commitment? (guide is 1-2 hours a month for 3-6 months or until objectives are met)

Recently, I reached out to a friend who is about 10 years ahead of me in consulting. I am reaching a point where I need to run my business differently to continue the growth I have experienced in 2016. I followed these steps, we had two sessions, and I left with a pretty big assignment: analyze my time and use it to create filter on my work in 2017. In this way, I can focus on the most important things, find help for some things, and say no to other things.

My commitment was to follow up with her by the end of the year with my progress. In my experience of mentoring dozens of people, this follow-up is the #1 missed step. Remember, at the heart of every mentor is a desire to help. Follow-up lets them know how they helped and demonstrates our ability to follow-through on commitments. It is also a fundamental belief/value of my business:

Learning + Doing = Growth

 

Whether you are a leader charged with developing your team, an HR leader supporting questions around development, or an individual that is committed to mastery in what they do, mentoring is probably the most powerful and accessible tool to help achieve your outcomes.

Here is a document I share with coaching clients to help them build powerful and positive mentoring relationships.

Lead well . . .