The Question Behind the Question

My daughter Gretchen texted me an interesting question one day that I thought would be an interesting topic for us to reflect on together here on the blog.

Her question was: “If the average person had to choose whether to be bored or stressed, which would they pick?" What I found so intriguing about this question is that I had not thought about these two things on opposite ends of a spectrum before.

The contrast I usually think about for STRESS is RELAXATION.

An example of stress vs. relaxation, not being bored vs. stressed is that being stressed is like when I am running to catch a plane that boards in 10 minutes and I am still in the security line, versus relaxation like when I am sitting by the pool with an adult beverage, reading a book that has been on my list for months.

Similarly, the opposite of being bored, to me, is being energized. Being bored is when I have a complete lack of interest in something, like when my wife wants me to sit down and watch a reality show with her. Being energized is when something brings excitement and even joy into my life, like playing golf or watching a great baseball game on TV.

But Gretchen’s question pitted running to catch a plane that is boarding while I am not at the gate against watching reality TV. To me, they are both just different kinds of pain. I was not seeing the win in the question at all. In fact, my initial thought was that Gretchen is so smart that she was trying to bait me into one of those questions that, as a dad, I wished I had my initial answer back to her once I heard what was really behind the question.

So, in a fairly typical response style, rather than answer the question, I thought that I would ask one in return. I typed, “It depends on what you mean by stress and what the last 60 days were like.” It was the best I could do at the moment. And it came off so clinical and “coach”-sounding. Why did I answer in such an egotistical way, rather than being open and curious about my daughter’s question?

why didn’t I think about her actual question behind the question?

I think my pride got the best of me. You know, my only daughter is texting me to get some of my sage wisdom and advice on something. Even as I write this I can feel myself swell up with regret. That is when I think a lot of us get caught up in our own heads. Our own high level of self-regard comes blaring though when talking to someone when we forget to have any empathy for the person who is asking the question or the question behind the question.

I wish I had asked, “Now, that is an interesting question! Why are you asking?” A much better response. Much more open. Much more curious. Much more about HER than it was about me.

I am so fortunate to have a daughter who looks past my flaws and insufficiencies and offers me grace at the moment. Rather than beating me up about lecturing her or accusing me of always being on my “emotional intelligence work game,” she said, “Thanks, Dad! A friend and I were talking about kids who have high school jobs and if it was better for them to have a job that was kind of relaxing but boring, or to have one that was stressful but went by really fast.” As I read her response, I thought, “Man I really blew that one”. The answer I gave had nothing to do with the real question.

My Life Lesson

I decided that I have to get better at this. I need to work on shedding my pride and focusing on what the person I am engaged with is really asking me. The skill for me to practice is listening to the question and remaining open and curious about what is being asked. Most of the time, I have to admit, I have no idea what is really being asked.

I need to get better at answering the question that lies behind the question. That is where the real gold is in relationships and communication.

Things I Learned About Leadership From My Mom

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Back to the work week and our own personal development. I want to share some things I learned about leadership from my Mom this week. If you are not considering wellness in your personal development, then you are leaving out a big component of your leadership unexamined that could have an impact on your effectiveness. This week's blog really had a profound impact on me personally.

Things I learned about leadership from my mom:

Culture Matters

My Mom was all about family. We were together all of the time. Not just my parents and siblings, but my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My Mom was a “stay-at-home Mom," and I was also with my grandparents every day. The culture of the family mattered. My Mom created a family culture that oozed safety and security for us as kids.

My good friends and experts on organizational culture, Dr. Boyd Johnson and Dr. Mike Linville will undoubtedly support this notion of the importance of culture in organizations. As will my old boss and good friend Tom Considine, who famously agrees with Peter Drucker that "Culture eats strategy for lunch."

“Culture, Culture, Culture” rings through my mind with the same tone that Jan Brady had in an old Brady Bunch episode, complaining that her sister Marsha got all the attention…”Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!!!” Culture definitely needs to get MUCH more attention in organizations than it currently does.

Edgar Schein, the great organizational culture theorist says that in our Western traditions of human nature, humans are social animals with primary social needs*. When these humans come together, if they are to survive, a set of rules and regulations will need to be established to make the environment safe for everyone.

I hope you caught the nuance. The rules and regulations are about making the environment safe. This set of rules and regulations is not about making people feel valued or understood, but safe. Why? My Mom said that because when people feel safe, they are able to perform at maximum capacity. When they feel threatened, their survival mode kicks in, their thinking decreases, and their ability to hear what the leader has to say goes down.

This is why we say when leaders are trying to make a point or provide feedback, it is important to focus less on what you have to say and more on how the person is receiving it. If the person receiving the feedback feels safe, then there is a greater likelihood that your message will be heard. My Mom created an environment of safety and security (with discipline) that allowed for growth and well-being to be nurtured in our family.

Leaders Show Up

You can’t delegate presence.  As a leader, you can delegate a lot of things to other people. However, you can not delegate your physical presence when it is needed by your followers. In my family, it didn’t matter what you had going on, you showed up for weddings and funerals.  You showed up for birthday parties and baptisms. You went to church every Sunday morning. My parents never missed a sporting event, a theatrical performance, a band concert, etc.

If you want followers to follow you, then you have to show up to what is important to them. Are they making a big presentation, but you are triple-booked on your calendar? Decide to show up to their presentation! Do they have a meeting scheduled with you where they need a decision? Show up to the meeting! Is there a crisis in their life and they need you to listen? Show up and listen!

Leaders Sacrifice

I grew up in a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood in Peoria, Illinois. My parents came from working-class parents who worked on assembly lines. We did not grow up with privilege, status, or great means.  Yet I always had new shoes for basketball tryouts, killer birthday parties, and an extra $20 bill in my pocket for gas to drive back to college. My Mom never seemed to have the newest or best, but I feel I always did. My Mom showed up. This created a feeling of caring and support that allowed for risk-taking and freedom.

Followers notice the sacrifices of the leader. They notice when you stay late and help them with a project when you could be off to a social event. They notice when you answer a phone, text, or email from them. They notice when you give of yourself to them when you had other options. What do you think you might get in return for your sacrifices? I would propose that you would get these things: commitment, loyalty, and extra effort.

Interestingly, do you know what is missing in a lot of organizations today? I would suggest these things I learned about leadership from my Mom: commitment, loyalty, and extra effort. I wonder if there is a reason. One thing I would add is that my Mom never expected anything in return. If you expect loyalty, then to me that is a bit coercive. But if you willingly sacrifice as a leader, expecting nothing in return, like my Mom, then you may just get the loyalty and commitment you are looking for.

Homework: Consider the reflection questions posed in the article. After you spend some time thinking about them, see if you notice any changes that you need to make in how you are approaching your leadership.

*Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (p. 144).

What Is Your Change Style?

Stop and think for a minute. Slow down, take a deep breath, and think for a minute about this question:

As a leader, what is the single most important thing you are trying to change in your organization?

Do you have that ONE thing in mind? Now write it down.

In my work as an organizational consultant and executive coach, I often work with leaders who have several things they are trying to change at the same time. They are trying to make their organization more efficient, plus more focused, and they want to have their employees think in a new or different way.

It would be fairly easy to lead if you only had to make one change at a time, and you could do this in a linear and synchronous fashion. No one I know in leadership has this luxury though.

Change is all around you, coming at you from every side.

• Budgets change

• People change

• Expectations change

• Visions change

• Customers change

• Products change

• Regulations change

• Bosses’ minds change

Often all of these types of changes happen at the same time. Sometimes you are in complete control of these changes, and other times you feel like you are in more of a reactionary position.

No matter the position you find yourself in, as a leader, one thing is clear, part of your calling is to be able and willing to change. No one these days is interested in people who can just lead the status quo.

Style Preferences:

One of the things I have been thinking more about over the past several months is not necessarily the types of changes or even my level of control over them, but more so about how my team members and customers approach change in general. In our organization, we have a lot of changes going on sometimes all at once:

• We add new team members

• We launch new websites

• We take on more projects

• We add new courses to our teaching repertoire

• We start to do executive coaching in new industries and with new clients

Change is everywhere.

However, I have been trying to focus less on the “what” that is changing and more on the “how” each person on my team responds to change.

Let’s face it. Some of you are change junkies. Change gives your brain a huge dopamine rush and you get an overwhelmingly positive feeling when things are changing. Some of you like to move so fast that you end up getting several steps ahead of everyone else and you are forced to slow down or lose others completely. Others of you realize that change is imminent, but you have more of a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach.

Experts on change agree that while there is no one-style-fits-all approach, each of us has our own approach or style that we are more comfortable with when it comes to change.

Changes Style Indicator:

A tool that I use to better understand the change styles of my team is the “Change Style Indicator”. This is a simple and easy-to-use assessment you can look up online that gives people a glimpse into their style preferences when they are faced with change. The assessment takes less than 10 minutes to complete, then you are scored on a change style continuum of three styles that represent distinct approaches when responding to change. The continuum ranges from a Conserver Style to an Originator Style, to a Pragmatists Style, occupying the middle range of the continuum.

I have found that working with my team in light of this assessment has really helped us to manage all the changes we are facing in a more productive way. While this tool does not give any indication of whether or not we are good at change, or even if our styles are effective for the type of changes we are facing, what it does for me as a leader is:

• Allow me to approach everyone on my team as an individual in the ways they like to approach change

• Get a better feel for the underlying emotion and anxieties associated with the change

• Better understand some of the natural conflicts that arise between team members based on the changes they are facing

• Get better at responding, helping to enhance collaboration, and even encouraging the team to innovate more

I asked a member of my team to answer a few questions about their perspective on the Change Style Indicator.

1. How easy was this assessment to take and how long did it take you to complete it?

   The Change Style Indicator assessment only took me about 15 minutes, including the time to read the instructions. The questions are straightforward and ask you for the response that immediately comes to mind. There are no "right" or "wrong" answers, you are just asked to be candid in your responses.

2. What is one thing that you learned about yourself from the assessment that you didn’t already know?

   I have utilized several personality and communication style assessments, but I've never taken one directly related to dealing with change. I enjoyed reading the detailed results report, which indicated I am a "Pragmatist" with a "Conserver" orientation. This means that I prefer the kind of change that happens for practical reasons, and I want to make sure any change is a group effort, keeping in mind what is best for the team.

3. How can you see yourself using this assessment as you influence others on our team?

   The results report provided a useful outline of my strengths and weaknesses when dealing with change. This is helpful for my work in the future as it gives me tools to explain to other team members how I can best contribute to change within our organization. If everyone on my team utilizes the Change Style Indicator, it can help us when planning our work so that the assignments and expectations are tailored to suit the strengths and weaknesses of each team member.

4. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to be more influential as a leader in their organization?

   Self-awareness is an essential skill for any leader. When working with a team, you not only have to understand yourself but you have to also be able to adapt your style when necessary to get the best results with your group. The Change Style Indicator is a useful key to self-awareness in managing organizational change.

So, as you can see, simple tools like this can be quite effective in helping us as leaders to assess our teams and what the best approaches might be to maximize our change opportunities.

Takeaway:

Go back to that change that you wrote down initially at the beginning of this post. Now think about all the people on your team who are affected by that change. What words would you use to describe the way they approach change? I think taking some time and assessing how people respond to change can make all the difference in how effective we are as leaders in making change happen.

Do You Share These Observations Regarding Leadership Momentum?

I am regularly adding new coaching clients into my practice throughout the year. With that in mind, an important area to reflect on is the future of my coaching practice. “How many new clients will I engage with next year? Who will they be? What will my coaching practice look like in the coming months?” It is important to thoughtfully reflect on these questions in order to determine how I can proactively plan for a successful year for both myself and my clients.

Another area of my professional life that I reflect on is the work my clients have asked me to do with them. I begin by looking at my calendar to observe all the work I did in the past 12 months. I look at all the times I spent teaching, training, facilitating, coaching, creating content, etc. Then, I ask myself a hard question: “Is the work I am doing still relevant? Is it meaningful for those who call on me to work with leaders in their organization?”

Finally, I spend time in personal reflection and journaling. Perhaps most importantly, reflecting on how I spend my time, then I compare this data with what I really enjoy doing in my work life.

Momentum

One way to look at whether or not I am relevant is by using the idea of momentum. This is a concept that I borrow from the world of personal investing and finance.

One of the personal-finance newsletters I read on a very regular basis is called “Sound Mind Investing. (You can learn more about them at www.soundmindinvesting.com.)

In an older newsletter, Matt Bell wrote about the concept of momentum. According to Matt:

“A fundamental mistake many investors make is to move too quickly in choosing investments. They read about a hot stock or this year’s best-performing mutual fund and jump in. It’s all very ad hoc and reactive. Momentum is the idea that the recent past performance tends to persist-that is, it tends to continue, at least into the near term future.”

This means that what has happened in the recent past is likely to continue into the near future. It is what we know to be true from the world of physics; that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, while an object at rest stays at rest.

Momentum in the financial world becomes an objective measure of what is going on in the marketplace so that the investor can build a strategy based on real data and not just turn on the TV and be moved to buy random stocks.

Momentum Analysis

As I analyzed my journaling from the past years, here are 4 things I noticed:

1. Emotional Intelligence remains an important leadership construct.

   This is true for both the training work I do as well as the coaching. Most of the time when leaders hire me there is some growth desired in this area. I think Dan Goleman got it right when he wrote, “What really matters for success, character, happiness, and lifelong achievements is a definite set of emotional skills, not just purely cognitive abilities.” Organizations put so much emphasis on how smart and skillful people are that they often miss this other very important dynamic of “how” they work with others.

2. Relational empathy.

   I don’t know if this is a symptom of our political climate or not, but people have become very polar. They have an idea or a framework for how the world should be and they stick to it no matter how silly it makes them look. Maybe this is a natural outcome of divisions of labor, where those trained in finance wear finance glasses and only see the world through finance. Or, how those who are trained and educated in marketing only see the world through a marketing lens.  As leaders, we seem to have lost the skill of trying to understand where the other person is coming from, and, even more important, what it is like to be them. We are so concerned with our own selfish ambition and desires that we have lost sight of the perspective of other ways of seeing and doing.

3. Being flexible in ambiguous times.

   I was on a call with a potential client once whose organization has been turned upside down. Half of the people have either been laid off or reassigned to new roles. There is a tremendous amount of ambiguity about what certain jobs actually are and what people are supposed to do every day. I was asked to talk with the team about the impact of emotions during times of tension and what to watch for as leaders when working with others. I was interrupted with a question in the middle of my presentation when one well-meaning soul asked, “Dr. Livingston, enough already about helping people process the loss they have experienced, can you just help us get to a place where things are normal and we can all just get back to work?” My response to them was? “This is your new normal. Learning to be emotionally flexible and helping people deal with where they are in the moment IS the new calling for leaders.”

4. Connecting with talent.

   When the stock market slides, notwithstanding the economic outlook and, more specifically, the jobs outlook, is really robust. Senior leaders need to make sure they are connecting with talent because my sense is that talent is always itching for new opportunities. I think senior leaders need to get much better at proactively scheduling time to connect and care about the talent in the organization. Take them for coffee. Schedule a lunch. Learn what is on their mind. You do not need to do another ROI calculation on a process. What you really need to do is ensure you have the talent on your team to turn the future you are planning for into a reality.

Do you agree with these 4 observations? Let’s discuss these observations, or you can share your unique observations regarding your own organization.

One Way to Be More Open to Learning

It seems like people these days really have a hard time agreeing on much of anything, and most of what we argue about is misinformed. Nonetheless, we continue to drone on and on, spurred on by a few members of our tribe or a couple of dozen likes on Instagram.⁣

Can we just agree on one thing? Gene Roddenberry was a genius!
Who is Gene Roddenberry, you ask? You’re kidding me, right?⁣

As the creator of the original Star Trek, he was able to capture very distinct personality types in character development and then exploit them in a science fiction realm. One of the things I continue to be amazed by are the one-liners that came out of that show. ⁣

There are times when I will be in a conversation with someone and a Star Trek quote will just come to me!

Here are a few examples of some of those quotes:⁣⁣

- First, there is the overly emotional Dr. McCoy, “I am a doctor, not a bricklayer.”⁣
- There is the struggling fix-it engineer Mr. Scott, “You can’t mix matter and antimatter cold.”⁣
- Then, the starship captain himself, Kirk: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”⁣

But one of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Mr. Spock, who in Season 3, Episode 9 says, “In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.”⁣

Oh, Mr. Spock, we need you now more than ever.⁣ Critical moments need critical thinking.⁣

Spock’s quote starts with “in critical moments.” To me, that means:

• When the pressure is on. ⁣

• When the stakes are high. ⁣

• When you feel like you are in a make-or-break situation. ⁣

• When your reputation is on the line.⁣ These are the times that the logical Mr. Spock would say that as humans we cave in and create the reality we want. ⁣⁣

We tend to see what we want to see, we just hear things wrong, our memory stores the data wrong, or we put two and two together thinking it should be an equal four but it turns out that the problem is not linear. Here are some examples for you to think about that fit into this category:

Which of the following statements would you say is true?⁣⁣

• Carrots improve your vision. ⁣

• Vitamin C boosts our immunity.⁣

• Coffee stunts growth.⁣

• Sugar makes you hyper.⁣

• Your body needs a good internal cleanse every now and then.⁣

• The Great Wall of China is visible from space.⁣

• Bats are blind.⁣

The thing is, it is not just Mr. Spock who accuses us of seeing the world as we wish. Diane Halpern, former President of the American Psychological Association and Professor at Claremont McKenna College, writes in her text on critical thinking that, “the rapidly accelerating pace of change and widespread availability of a glut of information has made the ability to think critically more important than at any other time in history.” ⁣

To Dr. Halpern’s point, I did a quick internet search for each of the statements bulleted above. While none of them are actually true, all of them require some deep critical thinking to come up with a reason why they are not.

Here’s what I mean: ⁣

I did a Google search of “does Vitamin C boost your immune system?” as my keywords. The sixth citation down (after all of the internet ads), is from the Cleveland Clinic. Talk about a reputable source! The title of the article is “3 Vitamins that are best for boosting your immunity.”⁣

Now, let’s face it. Most simply take into account:⁣

• The question you typed in.⁣

• It is the first page of Google.⁣

• You see that it is from the Cleveland Clinic.⁣⁣

You may figure, why even open the article? Case closed! Vitamin C boosts the immune system. ⁣The thing is, you would be wrong. ⁣

I can hear you now. “Scott, now you are being a mean blogger who is picking on Vitamin C. My Grandmother and my Mom swore by it and they never had a cold in their life. They never let me down and I love them. Who are you to insult my Grandma?” ⁣⁣

So, don't take my word for it. Do some critical thinking and digging for yourself. ⁣

According to Dr. Jen Gunter, MD who has done a podcast called “Body Stuff”, the immune system works just as it is, and if you actually were to “boost” it, that is what becomes the problem that will often bring people to their demise. Your immune system does not need a boost! ⁣

It turns out that most of us (please consult your own physician for anything health-related you read here or anywhere else), get enough Vitamin C in our diet and do not need to supplement it at all. If your body has enough Vitamin C, then it eliminates what is not needed in your urine. So for most of us, that 500mg of Vitamin C we take at about $0.10./day ends up in the toilet. ⁣

But wait a minute... The Cleveland Clinic said…⁣

Actually, no they didn’t. If you open the article they say you don’t need it unless your doctor advises it. But the marketing people who run the Cleveland Clinic’s blog posts know that if they put a number in the title you are more likely to open it. So, turns out, the article is true, but the title is a little misleading.⁣

I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes at me because I am making an argument against a longtime belief. You probably don’t care as much about bats not being blind (they are not blind, they just rely 3x more on their hearing) but when I put “detoxing your inners” on the list, well them’s fighting words.⁣

This is part of the problem.

Some of us have made very public claims about some of these things. You might even have an anecdotal story of knowing a person who takes Vitamin C and never gets sick. And you have told this story over and over again, so not only do you believe that it is true but you have claimed it publicly so your reputation is also on the line. This isolated example of the person you know does not support a direct correlation between Vitamin C consumption and immune system boosting. While both of the observations may be true, the conclusion is false. ⁣

Critical thinking is a skill. And for most of us, on most topics, we should likely say less and study a lot more. Rather than coming to a rapid conclusion, let’s get better at saying,

“I don’t know, but I am open to learning more.”

Self-Awareness: The Path to Personal Growth

Have you ever encountered someone who seemed completely out of sync with their surroundings? I recently had a client describe an experience that got me thinking about the importance of self-awareness, particularly in the context of leadership.

She was attending a conference for business leaders when she encountered a CEO who seemed to be on a different wavelength than everyone else. Let's call him John. John was known for being a brilliant strategist and a charismatic speaker, but in person, she found him to be aloof and dismissive of those around him. She watched as he spoke to other attendees, barely acknowledging their presence and dismissing their ideas without much thought.

During a panel discussion, John was asked a question by a fellow CEO. Instead of answering the question, he launched into a long-winded monologue about his own accomplishments, completely oblivious to the topic at hand. The other CEO tried to interject to get the conversation back on track, but John continued talking over him.

Following the panel, my client had a one-on-one conversation with John and inquired about his leadership philosophy. John spoke about his aspirations for the company and the strategic plans he had implemented, but when another attendee asked him a specific question about his team, he appeared uneasy. John acknowledged that he didn't have a strong grasp of his employees' personalities and interests, and further stated that he didn't feel invested in their individual lives or issues.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that John is a classic example of a leader who lacks self-awareness. He was so focused on his own vision and accomplishments that he didn't realize how his behavior was impacting those around him. He didn't see the value in engaging with his team or even taking the time to understand their perspectives.

Self-aware leaders are able to build strong relationships with their team members and create a culture of trust and collaboration. They are able to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and surround themselves with people who can complement their skills. And they are able to navigate complex situations with grace and empathy, knowing when to listen and when to assert their own perspective.

Self-Awareness

Take a moment to reflect on your own level of self-awareness. Are you able to recognize how your behavior impacts those around you? Are you willing to listen to feedback and make adjustments when necessary? Are you building strong relationships with your team members? By cultivating self-awareness, you can become a more effective leader and create a more successful organization.

Curious about where to start? Here are 6 critical skills for leaders to develop self-awareness:

6 Critical self-Awareness Skills

Identifying your emotions and their impact on your actions.

It is not enough to know how you feel. You have to think about the impact of your actions. When someone drops a bomb on you, you must consider not only how you feel, but how those feelings are impacting your behaviors. Your behaviors at the moment are impacting your followers in the future.

Confidently expressing how you feel without relying on others.

As a leader, you need to be confident in expressing your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. You also need to be aware of how your expressions will impact others beyond this present moment.

Creating vulnerability in your relationships.

People under your leadership need to know you are real. They need to know who you are. Research shows that for most people, trust is a slow-building, iterative, and layered process that happens over time. According to Dr. Brene Brown, vulnerability involves risk. This is exactly what the people who want to follow you are looking for.

Realizing how your emotions impact your decisions.

We are not always as rational as we desire to be. Stop and think for a moment about the last few decisions you had to make. Now think about the emotions that were involved in them. Did your emotions impact your decisions? Of course, they did! But that is not the point. The point is for you to consider their impact on your decision-making.

Recognizing your primary coping mechanisms.

Every leader needs coping mechanisms. We need ways to deal with the stress that naturally comes with our role. If you don’t have specific plans to deal with stress when it comes your way, you need one. Leaders who are self-aware can do more than just say they can cope with stress, they can communicate their plan for putting it into motion.

Prioritizing what gives you joy.

Do you know what you love? Do you know what brings you joy? Do you know what makes you happy? Good! Now, do you prioritize it? Before you say yes, take a moment to check your calendar or talk to those loved ones around you. Now, can you say you prioritize what brings you joy?

Are you interested in this topic of self-awareness & leadership? I’m excited to share with you this excellent podcast from two EQ-i certified practitioners, Kristin Bartholomew & Tara Rumler, as they explore self-actualization as it relates to parenting — the ultimate leadership role! Click below to check it out or share it with someone who may enjoy it.

President's Day 2023

Happy President’s Day 2023. I think that every day we have a choice as to how we are going to show up. Today is one of them.

Leader Challenge

Leaders, I know you have opinions and I know you have problems to solve and decisions to make. 

People are not always doing things exactly as you think they need to be done. I know you would never say that you are the center of the universe, but sometimes, as leaders, we think we are.  We make it all about our vision, our agenda, our goals, our, our, our.

Maybe this week as leaders we spend less time on our own personal agendas and we become more appreciative of those who are on our teams and really make things happen for us in our organizations. Just like presidents are committed to doing for our country.

How about this President’s Day, choose to be thankful for the many great things you have in your life.

Be thankful:

• That you may not have to be at work today! You get a day off.

• If you have a job that doesn’t observe the holiday, you are lucky to work and have a job today!

• That you hopefully have family and friends and coworkers in your life that you care about.

• That we get to observe this day to celebrate the birthdays and lives of all of our United States presidents.

Just watch yourself today. Practice some self-awareness, and if you find yourself starting to complain about a subject, try to show some impulse control and turn it into gratitude.

Now, I never want to come off too heavy or seem like I am preaching. That really is never my intention. So, after you have really thought about being thankful for all that you have, then by all means do something frivolous. Go to dinner with your family, go play 18 holes, take your kids or grandkids to the park, and just enjoy the break. Work will always be here tomorrow.

Valentine’s Day Is Around the Corner!

Hey, I know you are busy! We all are busy. But being busy is no excuse for not letting the most important relationships in your life know how important they are to you. The thing I love about this day set aside to celebrate love is the intentionality of it all. 

Valentine’s Day is a day when I can celebrate the women who are important to me. They are all very special relationships and I want them to know how much I cherish the relationship I have with each one of them. I guarantee that there will be something I will do for each of them that lets them know on this special day of celebration that they are on my mind and in my heart.

Being Intentional

One thing I have noticed over the last few years is the value of my relationships. I am a bit ashamed to admit that in the past I have sometimes put the idea of money or commerce above relationships. Thankfully, I can honestly say that I no longer do this. Not that making a living in my work is not important, because it is. However, money is simply no longer the thing I want to be very intentional about.  

For me, beyond the giving of a gift like flowers or chocolate, on Valentine’s Day, I will intentionally focus on ensuring my relationships are well-formed and intact. Being intentional requires being meaningful and purposeful. It requires aligning my goals and my choices so that what am I doing reflects what is important to me.

I think Valentine’s Day is a great way that I can bring meaning and purpose into both my life and the lives of the relationships that are most important to me. And I can do this by being intentional with my emotional connections.

Emotional Communication

One way to show your loved one that you care for them is to purchase them something that is a token expression of your love. This is probably the easiest for most of us to do, but in the end, probably communicates the least how we really feel about the other person.

By no means am I saying that you should stiff your loved one on this day, but why not consider taking an additional step toward some deeper emotional connection with them?

A great way to show your significant other how much you care is to do something for them. In addition to or instead of buying something, why not actually create something? There are not many things that say “I love you” more than the other person knowing you spent time creating something, thinking of them the entire time you were doing it. Maybe you could sit for an hour and write them a poem? Or, if you are so inclined, maybe you could step in and take care of a task that they would normally do themselves.

The big idea around emotional connection is that you are noticing them and thinking about them. And If you can, perhaps the best way to connect with someone emotionally is to simply spend time with them.

Try engaging in some conversation about a subject they enjoy but that you might not know so much about. Maybe there is a TV show that your partner really enjoys or a sports team that they follow. The idea around small talk is that you become inquisitive about all aspects of their lives. Psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan developed an approach that he called “detailed inquiry,” where you get curious talking to others about all aspects of their lives.

What research is showing is that these small insignificant conversations actually create more of an emotional connection than the deeper conversations about life's most significant issues. Even something as simple as making a grocery list together or going over in detail all the movies playing at the theater before deciding which one to see can draw you closer to another person.   Once you have talked about these small insignificant experiences, then go out and share them together!

Maybe you can sit with your significant other and create some small talk about what a great Valentine's Day dinner might look like for the two of you. What the meal will consist of, what kind of candles should there be, do you want a tablecloth or a runner, cloth or paper napkins? Just get curious together about the insignificant details. Then go to the store together and buy all the things you talked about. Get the napkins, the steaks, the candles, etc. Tomorrow, put the entire dinner on the table together. Fix the meal together. Pour each other a glass of wine. Just be together in the same moment. These are the things of deep emotional connections.

Too many times we think these types of connections require deep topics that are serious in nature, but if you want to connect with another person on an emotional level, try to spend some time just chatting about the small stuff and then create an experience around the small conversation.

You will be so glad that you did. Happy Valentine’s Day!

2 Helpful Tools for Improving Team Health

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to facilitate a discussion for a team on how they could become healthier.

The team by all accounts was high performing - made up of “top guns” from the industry. A group whose contact list goes three and four layers deep into important and influential customers. They have done a remarkable job as a team, pulling their share of the weight for what needed to be done in the organization. Hitting all their yearly goals by the third quarter.

The premise for team health is that there is a synergy that happens where the team can do amazing things that no single member could ever achieve on their own. That when there is team health there is a feeling of invincibility and performance can increase.

On the flip side, when teams are not healthy, like when certain aspects of performance become overemphasized, other parts of the systems that make us human can become damaged. And while it may look like we are performing, the results are short-term. Worse, the synergy that is anticipated never happens.

I was having a conversation with a physician friend once about this idea of extremes in performance when it comes to human health. This physician is actively involved with athletes in a consulting capacity and recalled a meeting he was in preparing a local community for a marathon race. The race is fairly well known so, as you can imagine, the health of the runners is really important.

The people in charge of the race convened a committee of 20 physician marathon runners and my friend chaired the committee. The interesting thing about the group of physician-runners was that all of them were under the age of 55 and of the 20, about 40% (8) of them had heart stents. High performers in any discipline have to think deeply about all of the systems that go into their performance. Failing to do this will put undue stress on one aspect of the system, ultimately causing a breakdown in the ability to perform.

My Story

The objective given to me by the organization that hired me was clear: The folks on this team needed a perspective that they are leaders in the organization. To achieve this, they needed to learn to better understand themselves and lead themselves as leaders.

Those of you who love to study how organizations learn will recognize the task as one that involves double-loop learning. The group I was working with needed to examine some of the basic assumptions they had about themselves and then how the organization defined performance. Double-loop learning encourages teams to ask clarifying questions about how they identified the problem, what processes they used to understand the problem, what they can learn from the problem, and how they can apply that learning in the future.

To get this team to see their performance in a new way, they needed to think differently about what this term means and then develop some new ways of going about their work.

2 Ways To Encourage Learning

Two ways that leaders can foster learning on teams are by providing opportunities for exploration and advancement.

Exploration stimulates innovation, new ways of thinking, and creative processes to develop new products or incorporate new technology. One of the exercises I took this team through was how to be a better listener. I gave them some guidelines on how to listen better and focus on the needs of the other person. Then they were given a listening partner and a set amount of time in which they were to do nothing but listen to the other person. We did three rounds of these questions and each time the questions got more difficult to just sit and listen.

The idea here was to give the team a new way of thinking about listening. As a leader, it is good to have a perspective or opinion but the broader organizational teams also have opinions and ideas. The takeaway for this group is that if they listened with more intensity, then they would understand the perspective of others and be able to create the organizational synergy that senior management was expecting.

Advancement is when teams look for ways to improve existing processes or products while incorporating innovation and creativity. Leaders encourage team learning through experimentation, providing resources, implementing reflective practices, and celebrating victories during the learning process. One of the unhealthy behaviors that had surfaced on this team is that when something did not go their way, rather than engaging in healthy conflict, they internalized the issues and they became more awful. So, if one of their members was inadvertently left off of a meeting invite list, rather than be more assertive and reach out to the meeting organizer, the team would say, “it is not our place to get invited, if they don’t value our input then that is their fault.” As a team, we worked on understanding our individual conflict styles and then improving processes where they needed to be flexible from their default conflict style.

As a leader, it is your responsibility to care for the health of your team. It is my hope you will continually be looking for ways to use exploration and advancement to improve the health of your team.

3-Step Recipe for a Productivity Reset

Question: When is the last time you experienced a productivity reset?

I read recently that in a knowledge-working society, the work we do is really about creativity.  Now, when I hear the word creativity my mind immediately goes to the painters and sculptors of the world. The work they do is creative. 

Before those of us who are scientists, technologists, and managers or leaders abdicate the world of creativity to the artists, we probably should step back for a moment and make sure we are not leaving the best part of us behind.

The Story

I had a conversation with one of my former graduate students who said she was completely burned out and didn’t know how she was going to get her research project finished on time.  She was definitely in need of a productivity reset.

Here is a part of our conversation:

“..By the time I finish my commute to and from work, I am logging 60 hours or more a week. In addition, I have a family and my church that are both important to me. I just don’t have any energy left for creativity to get this research project finished.”

I could just sense the frustration and disappointment in her voice as she was trying to figure out how to be more productive. Then almost without taking a breath, she said,

“…You know, perhaps I could be more efficient in the morning. If I got up an hour earlier I could get more done because I am at my most creative in the morning.”  

The Point

As knowledge workers, we are all going to have to realize that more time, more effort, and more energy don’t always equal creativity or effectiveness.  It just equals more time and more effort. That's it.  If you are playing a game of “who works hardest”, then keep going, but if you want to be creative and innovative, then maybe work as hard as you can while you're working and then stop and do something else.

I think there is a reason that athletes work really hard in times of peak performance and then rest their bodies.

There is a reason writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, William Stafford, and Victor Hugo would work for a while in the morning and then go for long walks in the afternoon.  

Both high-performing athletes and creative writers alike see the value of both hard work and the regenerative process of a productivity reset.  There is only so much a knowledge worker can do to be productive before they need to recharge their brain.

According to Margaret Moussa, Maria-Estella Varua, and Matthew Wright’s work on knowledge workers, what has been left out of the discussion up until now are issues of self-efficacy and well-being.  

The questions we need to ask ourselves as leaders are:

Can we as leaders continue to treat our knowledge workers the same way we treated productivity workers of ages gone by?

And… Can we as knowledge workers continue to try and cram more stuff into our day and expect quality outputs?

3-STEP Rest Process

Here are three things that I try to do when I am in need of a productivity reset:

1. Read. There is nothing like reading to stimulate productivity. If I ever have writer's block, reading poetry or fiction can be some of the best ways I know to get my juices flowing again.
   

2. Walk. I love to exercise, but when I work out I am really focused on pushing my body, so I don’t get many creative thoughts going when my heart rate is above 140. But when I am just out for a walk, the sun is shining, and I can sense the beauty all around me, my creative energy just seems to flow.
   

3. Phone a Friend. For me, there is nothing like community and conversation to spur creativity. I always feel better when I get off the phone with my coach or my coaching group. There is just something about talking to others that will spur my creative process.

As leaders, when we think about ourselves or those who are in our care, perhaps we need to be thinking less about how productive we can be and more about how we are practicing self-care. Elements like reading, taking a walk, and engaging in a community are the real ways we gain wisdom. 

Could it be that as knowledge workers we are really seeking things like wisdom, and as we do we actually become more productive as a by-product? Hmm, I think I will go for a walk.

5 Reflections to Consider as You Review Last Year’s Goals

Like many of you, last year I set some goals for my business, my career, and my personal life. Since we are almost halfway through January of 2023, I pulled out those goals to review them and assess my progress. I thought I might share with you what I have learned from that reflection time.

The Main Goal

One of the goals that I set in my personal life in the past was that for golf, I wanted to be able to consistently shoot in the mid 80’s by a certain time.

A goal is best when it is specific, measurable, achievable, and time-bound.

Currently, I am frustrated by how realistic that goal might actually be! When I set the goal, it was totally within my grasp. But, right now, I am not so sure.

I played a round recently and I scored a 95. However, I was shooting consistently between 89 and 91 previously. That is a 6 shot difference...in the wrong direction! As I was reflecting on this goal I had set, I not only became frustrated but I was disappointed as well.

Who wants to set a goal, get intentional with it, invest time in developing it, then feel like you are going backward?

You might be feeling this way about some of the goals you set as well. Maybe you haven’t made much progress, or like me in my golf game, you have gone backward a bit in your development.

Please do not get discouraged!

Oftentimes, we know we are growing because things get worse before they get better. If you hang in there and keep practicing, your goals can be within your reach. I have confidence that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve what it is you desire.

Here are 5 things I learned as I reflected on NOT MEETING my goal...

My Development Reflection

1. Changed My Tools.
   As I began my quest to become a better golfer, people kept telling me, “Scott, you need new equipment.” Mind you, the clubs I had were good enough. I had become comfortable with them and they were serving me well. But person after person, who I really respect when it comes to the game of golf, told me that my game would really improve if I upgraded my clubs. So I did it.
   
   Reflection Lesson: What I have learned is that development takes time, yet time does not stand still for development. Yes, I needed to retool, but that took months to happen! Month by month, my game did not improve because I did not plan far enough in advance.
   
   How about you? Have you ever set a goal for yourself, then time goes by and the expectation you have for yourself doesn’t have enough grace in it to allow for this time lag? If I had the new clubs earlier, where would I be now? Who knows? But the good news is that I have time, so maybe a little bit of grace toward myself might be a good thing.
   

2. Received Some Coaching.
   I am not sure how improvement happens without a coach. Now, coaching is not something you have to necessarily pay for, but I know in my golf game, I need new ideas, new things to practice, and accountability.
   
   Reflection Lesson: Coaching is mandatory for growth.
   
   How about you? When was the last time you were open to some feedback and trying new things in how you approach your development? The best thing my coach has done for me is kept me from going back to the things I should not have been doing.
   

3. Did Not Practice Regularly Enough.
   Some months are very busy month for me. I can have a very large new project at work added to an already full schedule. No excuses, I simply did not prioritize golf. Again, I think I need to give myself some grace. I am not naturally a good golfer, so I need practice time. I know if I do not practice, I will not improve. Period.
   
   How about you? Do you ever get so busy that you just don’t have time to prioritize your own development? It happens to all of us, but if we are not going to prioritize practice, what does that say about the expectations we have for ourselves? If something does not come naturally to you, practice is essential for development to occur.
   

4. Practicing Extremes.
   One thing I have noticed is that there is a big difference between my practice time and my game time. I had begun to take my practice sessions and extend them into my game time. Big mistake! Practice should be just that, a time to try new things. I was practicing extremely hard during my practice time. But, when I took it to my game time, it didn’t show the same results.
   
   How about you? Have you ever taken practice into the game and it didn’t go well, so you gave up? Instead of giving up, why not just back off the extreme of practice a bit? No need to go full force all the time. Practice hard, then find your game rhythm.
   

5. Failure As Learning.
   I think one of the things I was reminded of most during my reflection is that I am not failing at my goal. Sure, I have not yet hit my target. In fact. But, I have learned a lot along the way. I now have the right tools and the right coaching, and I’m practicing on a regular basis with the right mindset when it comes to learning and performance. I feel like I am ready for a breakthrough.
   
   How about you? How do you look at goals when you are not meeting them? How do you respond? Optimism is the skill of responding to setbacks and is a valuable commodity when things are not going your way.

The year is just beginning. Pull out your development goals! Review them honestly. Then, get moving toward the leader you want to be. It is never too late to give yourself some grace and begin your progress.

See you at the TOP!

How would you respond to this question?

“How can I help my boss get better as a leader?”

This straightforward question was asked by a direct report of my clients as we were wrapping up our Leadership 360 interview (a series of open-ended leadership questions that help my clients get a clear picture of how their leadership looks to those around them). 

A First For Me

I have been doing these structured Leadership 360 interviews for almost 20 years and have facilitated hundreds, if not thousands, of these 1-on-1 interviews. Not one person has ever asked me that question.  

I found it really interesting that this one dear person cared enough about her supervisor that she would want to know how she could be involved in her boss's development.

My Response

All of my coaching sessions are confidential, including the 360 report and development planning.  I wanted to answer her question, but I needed to be tactful as to not disclose what my client would be working on.

“How do I respond in a way that is helpful for her, without breaking any confidentiality I must maintain with my client? “ I quickly thought to myself.

Here's how I responded...

“I think the best way you can help your boss is by helping him be more self-aware. Now, this is going to require a level of trust on your part, and there could be some risk, so you need to ask yourself if you are willing to take the risk. If you are, then your boss has probably already in some way declared strengths, and things he would like to do better.”

She agreed, so I continued...

“Then help him see when he is doing it. Let's imagine he has told you he is a micromanager and wants to change. Perhaps in the midst of a project, at the appropriate time, you then say to him, 'You know, Jim, it feels to me right now like you are micromanaging me. Is that something you are intending to do?'”

She sat in silence on the phone for a seemingly endless pause.

“I can do that." She finally broke the silence. “Good,” I affirmed her. “Don’t feel like you have to change him, don’t feel like you have to coach him. Just help him see the times where he is doing something he wants to change.”

Helping leaders SEE the change they want to make is perhaps the biggest gift you can give to them.

What About You?

So many of us get caught up in our own development, but I’d like to encourage you to begin looking for ways you could support someone else with their development. Perhaps it’s shifting your focus from helping them solve the problem, to inspiring their awareness of the opportunity right in front of them.

If you feel encouraged and motivated by this post, try asking your leader how you support them in their development. Their response may surprise you and revitalize you in your own self-development journey.

Can Being Instead of Doing Affect Your Organizational Culture?

Years ago I worked at an organization that had a cultural norm of “respect for people." This norm was carried out in many positive ways such as compassion with the loss of an employee's family member, care with paternity and maternity leaves, and even performance-reflected pay-base in this respectful culture.

In one department, a leader swooped in with an agenda. He would make changes in performance standards but only select favorites would be told of these new rules. Low-performance ratings were given to people who had traditionally been top performers. The culture shifted dramatically and the organization became chaotic and fragmented. The previous cultural norms were no longer reliable. All anyone knew was to "please the leader or you are out."

Six months later the entire department had been decimated. The leader had to be replaced. What was once a high-performing organization had been completely and utterly destroyed by the actions of one person. One really loud voice was able to take down an entire team, exiting many top performers from the company in the process.

The culture you define as an organizational leader impacts the development of your team members. If they don't feel safe, they definitely won't feel valued as a team member. And if they don't feel valued, then they won't be motivated. When you have unmotivated team members you run the risk of losing them or leaving untapped potential on the table.

So, how do you create a culture that allows your newest team members to feel safe as well as your current colleagues to be motivated? Perhaps it's not something that you DO, but instead what you can BE.

Focus on developing your Emotional Intelligence. This effort on your part will impact the culture you want to create. As you create this positive culture, the desired behaviors will become part of who you are and not just something that you do occasionally. Think deeply about the kind of culture you are shaping as you lead your team.

Here are five things you can become that will positively impact the culture of your organization:

Be Self Aware

Know yourself and be confident in your abilities. Understand how you handle your emotions and how they impact your company. Your team is watching to see how you will react. In fact, they may be able to predict your behaviors. Become just as aware of yourself and how you can choose your emotional responses.

Be Assertive

Communicate your what, how, and why in a simple, clear, and even repetitive way so that your team understands.

Be Empathetic

When I teach seminars on Emotional Intelligence, I often ask the group for a common definition of empathy. The response I get back more than any other is “walking a mile in the other person’s shoes.” I love this definition, but to take it one step further (pun intended),I would add that empathy is “walking a mile in the other person’s shoes, even when the shoe doesn’t fit." Being empathetic is about being compassionate, caring, listening, and being flexible as needed. I strongly believe we should not neglect the impact empathy has on shaping the culture of your company. Showing regular empathy will instantly invoke safety and value in your teammates.

Be in Control

Don’t waver or change things based on emotional reactions. When something comes up that causes an emotional response, remind yourself of the company’s mission and your principles to ensure your decisions align with your mission. This way, your team can feel confident that you won't make changes at the drop of a hat. As they trust you, they can focus on the work they need to do.

Be Optimistic

Positive people are magnetic. Their energy makes others want to be around them. In order to be optimistic, you have to change the way you talk to yourself. Begin to see the best in yourself, recognize setbacks as learning opportunities, and realize obstacles are unique, temporary events that you'll get through.

How are you doing with these five things? Look back over the list and fill in the rest of these phrases:

I want to be more…

So that my team can feel …

And we'll create a culture that is ...

Share what you wrote with a mentor or coach and have them help you with this development. If you can't think of who to share this with, write it in our comments below or contact me directly. I'd love to hear what you have to say and find out how we can help you!

Think differently as you set 2023 goals

I’d like to share a story about an inexperienced leader named Charlie. He shows up to work early and stays late. He’s motivated to move from an individual contributor into his first front-line leader role, but he’s not sure how to make that happen. He’s getting grief from his wife for working weekends, and his heavy workload doesn’t ever seem to ease up. How can he move into a leadership role if he’s buried in his current role?

Charlie’s organization is offering a course on Leading with Emotional Intelligence and his boss is encouraging him to attend the class. Charlie feels conflicted. According to research, if Charlie puts this training in the form of a goal that has a useful future orientation, he is more likely to get the results he is looking for, rather than to put the goal in some prevention connotation.

Research published in the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies (Sadler, T., Gibson, S., Reysen, S. (2017), reports the effect of a leadership training program on consideration of future consequences. (Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 10(4), 35-42.)

To operationalize this a bit, let’s say that you have a team of leaders who are all functional experts; Human Resources, Engineering, Information Technology, Sales, Manufacturing, Marketing, Finance and so on. This team, in the past, while getting along personally, has conformed to operating in silos. Each person does a great job of representing their own function to the face of the organization, but as a team, they struggled to get the synergy that would propel them to the next level.

The sales leader was always trying to maximize sales and didn’t understand why Marketing couldn’t supply the customer segmentation data fast enough. And why did it take Engineering so long to get the prototype built and delivered to the client?  Engineering, on the other hand, was frustrated with Supply Chain who just couldn’t get realistic estimates on how much materials were actually going to cost.

The president of the organization, realizing the leaders were all doing a great job of representing their individual role, needed to function better as a team. She was encouraged by a colleague to explore the idea of a training program that would focus on team building.  

But would it be successful? Would the organization get synergy from the team development so that the return on the investment would be positive for shareholders?   

A good question. A fair question.

Turns out the data is a little mixed on what should be expected.

A Little Background

It is no secret that organizations spend billions of dollars every year on training people in their organizations. Everything from skill-based training, like how to weld two pieces of metal together, or how to write computer code. From more leadership-oriented topics like Leading with Emotional Intelligence or Writing Your Own Leadership Story, to team building events.

Whether the training is skill-based or cultivating leadership in our organizations, the question always surfaces as to what is the return on investment.  There is research that can help us determine if leadership type training is effective in helping leaders meet their goals. But it depends…

Goal Type

It turns out that when it comes to goals, leaders pursue attainment using one of two strategies:

1. Promotion: concentrating the efforts of achievement on positive proactive and productive results.

2. Prevention: targeting efforts on avoiding negative outcomes.

Let’s revisit our friend, Charlie. If his orientation is more to prevent something bad from happening or toward thwarting a negative future response, then his success in the training and as a future leader is in question.

How can Charlie (or his boss) orientate the training as to get a more successful outcome for him as a leader? If Charlie says to himself, “I want to take this leadership training because it will help me be a better coach and mentor to others in the organization someday,” then the aspect to his goal attainment has shifted.

Charlie is moving from individual contributor to organizational leader, and that is what is going to help him get what he wants.

How are you orienting the goals of folks in your organization?  Are you creating a positive, futuristic orientation of hope for the future, or are you trying to prevent failure?

The orientation of our thinking matters!

Are You Listening to This Voice in Your Leadership?

Every leader needs a voice that will speak truth to others and help them see things that are not obvious. Henry Kissinger is famous for saying that one of the most difficult things for a young leader to do is to “speak truth to power;' to go up the power gradient with information that is contrary to what the hierarchical, authoritative, and referent, position believes to be true. We have all been there at points and felt the emotion of that moment. There is inherent organizational danger in communicating things to a leader that they are not seeing at the moment:

• You could be rejected, which leads to embarrassment

• You could be dismissed, which leads to self-doubt

• You could be humiliated, which leads to isolation

• You could be discounted, which leads to demoralization

The young leader has information that someone in a decision-making position needs to hear, and is frozen at the moment by these potentially negative outcomes.

The other side of the proposition is, all things being equal, there is a huge upside in communicating to a leader what they are not seeing at the moment:

• You could be celebrated for the input

• You could be included in the decision-making process

• You could be honored for your courage

• You could be valued for your contribution

Whether it is a part of reality or a figment of our imagination as leaders, “speaking truth to power” can seem overwhelming. This is the risk tension that young leaders face. Some of the mediators that go into the “speak truth to power" equation are:

• The culture of the organization-What is the level of freedom that truly exists for information sharing?

• Young leaders' personal-risk tolerance-Where do they fall on a spectrum between “wary” and “adventurous”?

• Receptivity of the leader to feedback-What is the historical behavior elicited when contrary opinions have been shared?

Receptivity of the Leader

I think we can all agree that the young leader when faced with a decision to speak truth to power, has a burden that can feel like wearing a shirt made of lead.

However, as more senior leaders in organizations, how much of the burden falls on us to create an atmosphere where much of the risk is mediated for a young leader? How much of the responsibility is ours to create an environment in which others feel the freedom to be able to share?

I argue that much of the speaking-truth-to-power-dichotomy rests not in the hands of the deliverer but the receiver. And yet the senior leader is the one who oftentimes has the most to lose by missing key information that was never brought to them. In the fast-paced, get-it-done-now, microwave culture that organizations exist in today, many of us cave into our survival reptilian brain that tells us to do whatever we can to survive.

Many times these environmental and personal factors are not acting in our favor. As leaders, we have to put effort into creating a persona and a culture so that the voice we need to be able to hear in our organization comes through.

5 Actions you can work on today

Here are my top 5 tips for leaders who want to improve their chances of gathering all of the information they need to hear to be able to make an informed decision:

• Slow down your cadence-Most of the leadership mistakes I have made were because my world was moving too fast and I did not slow down to see more possibilities. The faster I went, the more convinced I became that I was right, and the further away I got from the truth. Take a deep breath, count to 10, silently sing a familiar tune very slowly (I like; “Row, row, row, your boat”), pray, and do whatever you need to do to slow your reality down.

• Become curious-The practice is to suspend your need to be right or heard and to work really hard to understand the other person's position. Before you jump to conclusions or shoot them down because of what you know that they don’t, spend some time to really discern the message they are bringing to you.

• Always say thank you-You would be surprised at how often I observe leaders in interactions where they turn and walk away without expressing gratitude. I don’t think it is an intent to be mean or degrading, the pressure of the moment takes the brain to the next thing rather than finishing the relationship with the current interaction. Researchers at USC found that simple acts of gratitude provide benefits ranging from feelings of reward and satisfaction to just helping people to hold on to their humanity.

• Spend time reflecting- At the end of your day, take the time to review the day. Review interactions you had with others. Resist the temptation to become defensive and ask yourself questions like: “I wonder what they were really trying to ask me? Why did I feel such a strong need to defend myself? Why did I feel such a strong need to exert power at the moment? What unintended consequences could the action I took cause?

• Do the inner work of developing your soul- The psychology data says you are as intelligent right now as you will ever be. Your personality is fully formed, so you know if you are extroverted or introverted. You have most of the skills you will ever need. So what is your next step in development? Do you need to work on developing the soul of your leadership?

Homework:

Pick one of the 5 Actions above and work on it every day for a week. For example, in every personal interaction and in every email you send, say “thank you." Work on making your attitude heartfelt. If you try any of these let me know how they go for you.

5 Coaching Mistakes to Avoid

As an executive coach, a common question I have to work through at the beginning of a new coaching engagement is

“Am I working with the right person?”

There are two reasons I find myself asking this question:

1. The person I am working with seems to be just as talented as their supervisor.

2. The people I coach are really good at what they do. They are technical experts in their field.

It doesn’t take me long to answer my own question. Yes, I am working with the right person. The higher you go in organizations, everyone is talented (for the most part) and the people are experts in their field. However, this does not mean they are experts in leadership.

Most of my coaching is helping to groom people for higher levels of leadership. Often there is some tactical, behavioral development that needs to occur.

It is the idea that Marshall Goldsmith writes about in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

I have had over 750 hours of coaching experience in the last 3 years and I have noticed something very interesting.

We all make mistakes.

Not a revelation, I know, but to me it is an interesting observation. Why? Because I wonder where organizations might be if not for the common mistakes I see them making in regard to coaching their leaders.

• Would turnover decrease?

• Would we unleash talent?

• Would customers have more delight?

• Would we ensure a solid foundation for future generations?

Enough Philosophy

Here are 5 coaching mistakes I observe. As you reflect on these mistakes, ask yourself what traps you might be falling into.

1. Confusing your needs with the needs of the person being coached
   
   Depending on your level of leadership, you are responsible for coaching your team to make one or more of the following connections:
   

   1. The mission of the organization to the vision

   2. The purpose of the organization to the mission

   3. The values you aspire to the purpose

   4. The guiding principles to the values

   5. The strategy to the guiding principles

   6. The tactics to the strategy

   7. Individual behaviors that implement tactics
      

   Let’s be honest, most of our coaching focuses on the last one. We are so in the weeds trying to control others that we often lose sight of what the person really needs.
   
   Rather than focusing always on whether or not they are “doing” things exactly as you want them, perhaps you need to go back and connect them to something that has more depth and meaning.
   
   I believe that most people get up in the morning and really want to do a good job for the company. Too many of us as leaders can not get out of our own way. We feel if we are not “doing,” we are not working.
   
   Before you coach someone, step back and ask yourself “What is really going on here? What does this person need from me today?"
   

2. You say it (or yell it) and they produce
   
   I wrote about this one in my book a few years back 7 Secrets of an Emotionally Intelligent Coach.
   
   We live in such a fast paced world that we lose our sense of time. We have instant access to so many things today that 10 or 20 years ago might have taken weeks or months. I no longer have to go through an administrative assistant or send a letter to see if someone can meet with me. I knock out an email or send a text and have a response, often 5 minutes after I sent it.
   
   I heard best selling author, John Townsend, (author of Boundaries, and other great books) give a great analogy the other day. He said it is like standing in front of an apple tree and yelling at the fruit to grow faster; all because the leader wants bigger or more fruit.
   
   Some things just don’t work this way. Some things take time to grow, develop, and mature, no matter how fast you want them.
   
   I recommend you spend some time doing what psychologists call “attuning” with your folks. The idea is to bring into harmony; to tune. The skill required is to connect with others at a deeper and more vulnerable level. This goes beyond being nice or friendly to really be able to listen well and understand the emotions and motivations that are the foundations for behavior.
   
   People will do amazing things for leaders they feel connected with.
   

3. This is their personality so they will always behave this way
   
   I have just about had it with personality profiling. All of them. From Myers-Briggs, to Insights, to the Enneagram, PDI, Horoscopes.
   
   What we are learning about human personality is that it is contextual. No one person is one way all the time.
   
   Those of you who love personality tests, especially those who are certified on them, will say that your model talks about how we need to be flexible and that this is an important aspect.
   
   Right. And if we need to flex, then we are not one way all the time.
   
   The problem is, as leaders, we put people in boxes. We create implicit biases around what people can and can not do based upon their level of introversion or extroversion. We judge, we label, we categorize, and way too often, we are dead wrong.

   
   According to Adam Grant, a leader in the psychology field out of the University of Pennsylvania, the statistical reliability and validity data around these assessments are just not strong enough to do with them the kinds of things organizations do.
   
   As coaches, we need to stop making judgments on personality and understand the context the person is. None of us is always a certain way. Let’s get in and coach people to understand more of what is at the root of what they are doing, not doing, or more likely doing, just not the way you want them too.
   

4. The person being coached is a robot
   
   Just because you run 24/7/365 and are always on, doesn’t mean everyone else is or that it is healthy. We have to start thinking more about corporate health, or better yet, the health of the people who work for us.
   
   How are you coaching your team to take better care of themselves?
   
   How are you modeling this behavior?
   
   If you give someone who already has a full place more to do, how are you helping them prioritize the work? They can not begin to know what is in your mind regarding how they should plan to deliver without your coaching and insights.
   
   Let’s remember that the people we are working with are just that: people.
   
   They have families and other communities outside of work. They have spouses, parents, and kids. They have all kinds of relationships they care about and care for. So, if someone on your team has a family member pass away, they are going to need time to mourn this loss. Just because they are back at work in 3 days (which is a travesty) doesn’t mean they are all the way back. If someone just got a diagnosis of liver cancer, for crying out loud, they are really not thinking about when they will have that report on your desk.
   
   Sure, you have a job to do. I get it. A lot of people are depending on you to drive results. But really, come on…just have a heart.
   

5. Your way is always the best way
   
   This one is a real mindset shift. It takes:
   

   1. Self-Awareness - Realize you don’t know what you don’t know. You might be really far removed from reality.

   2. Self-Regulation - Allow yourself the ability to think and not emotionally react.

   3. Humility - You don’t know everything so how can you get curious with others and develop a learn as we go frame of mind.

   4. Trust - Let them experiment with new and different ways and approaches.
      

   This really is about how you can create a learning organization, one that inspires people to creativity and innovation. At the very least, if there is a prescriptive way for them to work, be open to hearing other ideas on how the work could be done. People they will be more engaged if they know you want to hear their ideas.

As I reflect on this list, I realize it is very relationally focused.

That is because most of the time we hire smart, talented, skilled people who want to do a good job.

Therefore, it is the relationship with the leader that inhibits performance.

Humble thought.

Empowering Leadership Growth: Supporting Your Boss's Development

In a Leadership 360 interview I did last year, a direct report posed a question that had never been asked in nearly two decades of my coaching career: "How can I help my boss become a better leader?" This unexpected inquiry underscored a profound desire to actively contribute to their supervisor's growth and development.

Confidentiality in my coaching sessions is paramount, yet I sought a way to honor the question without compromising my client's privacy. My response pivoted towards fostering self-awareness, a foundational aspect of leadership growth.

My Response

"I believe the most impactful support you can offer your boss is through fostering their self-awareness," I advised. "If your boss has already highlighted their strengths and areas for improvement, consider gently pointing out moments when those aspects manifest."

Encouraging her to navigate this delicate path of offering feedback, I elaborated with an example: "If your boss has expressed a desire to reduce micromanagement, gently address the behavior at that moment. Help them recognize, without coaching or changing them, when they exhibit such tendencies."

The power of guiding leaders to perceive the change they aspire to make is an invaluable gift.

This experience prompted a broader reflection on our roles in personal development. Instead of solely focusing on our growth, why not explore ways to support others in their journey? Shifting the focus from problem-solving to inspiring awareness of opportunities can spark transformative change.

What About You?

I urge you to consider initiating conversations with your leader about supporting their development. Their response might illuminate new avenues for personal growth and invigorate your self-development journey too.

By actively engaging in the growth of those around us, we not only contribute to their success but also find newfound inspiration for our personal development.

How can you help your boss grow as a leader today?

5 Steps Toward Sustainable Change

This is a very busy time of year for many of us.  In the United States, we celebrated Thanksgiving last week, which means Christmas is just around the corner.

For many of you in business, that can also mean another thing.

It is performance review time.

This is the time when you will sit down with your supervisor and go over the goals you set for the year and measure your performance against those standards. That is how it is supposed to work in theory.

For over-achievers, this can also be a very anxious time. Most of us who work in organizations get up every morning and our self-created goal is to do the very best we can every day. Sometimes what we are supposed to do is very ambiguous. For example, we are doing updates on an hourly basis, when the report is only due weekly.

I am confident that most of you show up wanting to do the very best that you can with the time you have available, no matter what your individual circumstance. You feel like you have exceeded your goals and far surpassed expectations. Yet you will sit down with your supervisor at some point and discover only a percentage of us can get that top performance ranking in any given year.  The rules of statistics say that most of us will grade out on a bell curve to just an average performance rating, even though we feel you deserve more recognition.

We might get a little defensive or deaf to the supervisor’s message. I want you to think proactively, “What can I change to achieve recognition as a top performer next year?”

Maybe you need to add a skill to your toolbox. Maybe you need to be more assertive with your peers or show a little more empathy with your direct reports. Whatever the case, for most of you the real question you must answer is “How to sustain the change you want to make?”

The issue of sustaining change is not a new concept. Kurt Lewen observed in the 1940s that making a change was often very short-lived. It's like drinking an energy drink. Sure, you are moving faster or have more focus, but so often, once the caffeine is out of your system, the energy level decreases back to its original level. Lewen noted that something more was needed than a shot-in-the-arm type of boost. Sure, changes can be made in the short term, but how do you translate that change to sustained higher performance?

5 Steps Toward Sustainable Change

1. Create a long-term value proposition.

   The coaching client has to see relevant long-term value in making any change that has been identified. Focusing on a value proposition will often cause the client to wrestle with their own belief system. Without changing what the person believes to be true, old behavioral habits may return. For a health example, it may take me ten years to realize that currently overeating or eating the wrong foods was bad for me. It is too easy to succumb to temptation if you are only focused on getting your short-term needs met.

2. Experiment with new behaviors to find a fit.

   So often I hear coaches talk about practicing new behaviors before they even know if the new behavior will work or not. I like for my clients to experiment with several options to see what will work for them. The fear I have is if this step is skipped then we could end up practicing the wrong behavior and have to go through the process of unlearning and relearning. For my health example above, I had to experiment with reducing the size of my protein choice at dinner, giving up a snack before bed, working out an extra day a week, and eliminating fried foods. I played with all of these and finally decided I wanted to reduce my protein size at dinner. I went from eating an entire chicken breast to only eating a portion size equal to the size of my fist.

3. Practice the new behavior in a number of contexts.

   Then, I practiced this new behavior. When my wife and I grill now, we split a chicken breast. When I go out to eat I ask for smaller sizes. When I travel I am no longer ordering the largest meal on the menu because I forgot to have an afternoon snack. To gain sustainability it is important to practice the new behavior across contexts. For instance, one of my clients had to practice not interrupting his boss, his peers, and his direct reports. He had to practice not interrupting during presentations, one-on-ones, and on conference calls.

4. Identify relational feedback loops.

   No change can happen in isolation. We all need constant feedback. We need safe places to see if people notice the changes we are making. This is where it can help to share your development goals across a broad number of relationships. This constant feedback loop is critical to making that new behavior a sticky habit. My client would ask his direct reports during one-on-one meetings, "My goal is not to interrupt you and finish your sentences during our meeting today. If I do this would you please get up and put a tick mark on my whiteboard?” Feedback is a gift, all the way through the development process.

5. Celebrate the noted change.

   Let the dopamine in your brain flow. You have worked long and hard to gain this change, maybe somewhere between 2 and 3 months at a minimum. Celebrate. Why not let the good feeling of accomplishment and a job well-done flow through to those who have been with you on your development journey?

Do you have other coaching sustainability tips? Why not leave a comment or share an experience below?

Maintaining Emotional Balance, Even When Things Go Bad

In every organization, there are sometimes big changes and it can be hard to maintain emotional balance through each situation. You may be thinking, “Sure, it is easy to use the tools you mention when things are going well, but what happens when things go bad?” Just because there are changes that may affect your position, it does NOT require that it affects your emotions in a negative way.

Several situations could be categorized as difficult for leaders to work through: downsizing, merging, restructuring, relocating, new leadership, project failure, ethical and moral failure, just to name a few. Basically, any situation involving a change that does not give you a positive feeling. These situations don't have to be awful, but they encompass any kind of change that takes you out of your normal routine, which can make them difficult.

When there has been a breakdown in your company, it doesn’t feel good. Tensions are high and people are on edge emotionally. Realizing the emotion exists and not allowing the negativity to drag you down is the skill. This is emotional resilience. Bad things are going to happen.

How can you as a leader work on your own resilience to be able to lead others to see a brighter day ahead?

The first step in being a resilient leader in times of tension and complexity is to be aware of and manage your emotion. In an issue of Leadership Quarterly, Laura Little, Janaki Gooty, and Michelle Williams take on the topic of "the role of leader emotional management." The authors studied 163 leaders and their followers and concluded that when followers perceive that the leader was managing emotion, focusing on meeting expectations, and creating a future, followers felt better about the leadership being provided. Conversely, when followers perceive that leaders modulate or suppress their emotion, there is a lack of leadership and job satisfaction on the part of the follower.

What can you do as a leader to create better leadership in times of tension and complexity? How can you focus on meeting expectations while creating hope and a future for your followers when times are tough?

Here is a simple acronym that can help you stay in CHECK during difficult situations:

Consider the Situation

Take note of what's going on and how it is affecting you, your relationships, and your team. Can you describe the situation clearly and objectively, then identify the emotion it brings up and why? Are your emotions creating false expectations that need to be managed?

Hear from Others

Who are two or three people you trust that can speak into the situation? Identify individuals inside and outside of what's going on that can help you think and act productively as you figure out what to do. Don't spend too much time doing this, or else you become subject to the opinions of too many people and fall into a pit of gossip and negativity, which brings us to our “E."

Eliminate Negativity

This is easier said than done but necessary. Pessimism indicates that there's absolutely no hope or no solution to what's going on, and that's just simply not true. Whether it's coming from yourself or from others, be sure that what you are hearing and thinking will be constructive and productive. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association tells us we need to develop a “positive explanatory style." This is not “The Power of Positive Thinking” we all have heard about. It is much deeper than this. Seligman says, “What you think when you fail is crucial.“ How you explain things to yourself when they don’t go your way is the difference between helplessness and being energized.

Create a Plan - Organize and Carry Out

You've thought about it and talked about it, now it's time to decide what you will do about it. Start with the outcome you hope to have and work backward, documenting the steps you need to take to reach that outcome. The key here is to describe what success looks like to you before you implement the plan.

Keep Your Head Up - Stay Consistent, Present, and Motivated

We know it's not going to be easy, but no matter what happens you have the ability to take a deep breath, stay positive, and keep going. What are some things you can do to remove yourself from what's going on, clear your head, and rejuvenate yourself to stay in the game?

HOMEWORK

Think about this acronym and how you can apply to a difficult situation you are facing. Write CHECK on a note and stick it somewhere you can see it as a reminder of this process. When you see it, think about how you can apply it to the things causing tension for you and your organization.

How to Hold Each Other Accountable and Still Care

When I was young, I did not do much reading. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, there was just no time for it between watching basketball on TV and playing basketball every other minute that I was awake. When I entered the fifth grade, that all changed because our teacher, Mrs. Katobi was pretty clear that if you wanted to get to sixth grade, some of your time would be spent reading.

I can recall a conversation she had with me:

“What do you enjoy?” she asked. “Sports. Basketball mostly,” I replied.

“Good, find and read a book about a basketball player and give me a book report on Monday.”

“I don’t have any books on basketball players,” I said to her, thinking this would be the end of the conversation.

“Fine,” she said, “I will call your mother and tell her that you need to go to the library.” And she did.

So, instead of shooting hoops after school that day, my mother drove me to our local library.

Not only that, but Mrs. Katobi had also phoned ahead and told the librarian I would be looking for a book about a basketball player. The librarian escorted me over to the biography section where it seemed to me like the sheer number of books on the shelf could keep a kid from ever playing basketball or another sport ever again. Just picking one book from this vast sea of paper was overwhelming.

This librarian at Peoria Heights Library asked me, “Who is your favorite basketball player?”

“Wilt the Stilt Chamberlin,” I replied, thinking that no way would there be a book on Chamberlin, then I would be back on the court in no time.  

She said, “Let me see. I think there is a book on him that came in not too long ago.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” I thought to myself.

Walking over to the shelf, she pulls an autobiography, Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door, off the shelf.

I have always been thankful for these two women, the librarian and Mrs. Katobi. They knew what was best for me. They cared enough to set high expectations (at least for a poor kid from the other side of the tracks) and held me accountable. They knew the work I needed to get done and helped me find an interesting way to do it. They did not micromanage the entire work process. Mrs. Katobi cared enough to take some roadblocks out of my way by calling both my mom and the librarian. As I reflect, this really gave me the feeling that she cared enough to make the calls on my behalf.

The bar was set for me. Care and compassion were shown. Then it was up to me.

Paul Zak made an interesting argument about this when he wrote in Harvard Business Review and in the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, about the powerful neurochemical oxytocin. According to Zak, no matter what you think about people in your organization, the decision to show up is completely voluntary. In our society, people can pretty much do whatever they want to do. Employees are not that different than people who go to church or a grocery store. They, in essence, volunteer to do whatever it is they are going to do.

Sure, in a work organization they are paid. Zak gives insight into this, stating that his research shows, “they choose an organization at which to work.” It is in this realization the brain chemical oxytocin comes into play. The culture of your organization can stimulate oxytocin in your employees through all types of engagement where people feel cared for and respected. Alternately, your work environment may feel more negative, causing people to feel driven elsewhere to a place where they are more valued and appreciated.

According to Zak, his work with oxytocin shows it is the biochemical basis for the Golden Rule. “If you treat me well, my brain will synthesize oxytocin and this will motivate me to reciprocate.”

I shared this research, through the lens of Emotional Intelligence, with a client I was working with. He listened intently, nodded his head, and said, “Yeah, but...”, meaning “I do not agree”. Following the “yeah, but,” came “what we need to do is set clear goals and hold our associates accountable to do what they say they are going to do.”

“Exactly” I agreed. Holding them accountable with care and compassion will get them to want to engage.  

Turns out that is really not the end of the oxytocin story or my story. You see, I read the book, did the report, turned it in, and thought that was it. Assignment finished. I wanted to get back out to shoot hoops. However, Mrs. Katobi pulled a brilliant move.

“Class,” she said that next week, “I have just read the most fascinating report about a very tall basketball player and I thought you all might enjoy learning about him. Scott, why don’t you come up and share what you learned about Wilt the Stilt?”

When I finished, they clapped.

According to Zak, another big surge in Oxytocin occurs when we celebrate success. In addition, another neurochemical gets released called dopamine, which among other things is the brain’s reinforcement chemical. I wonder if Mrs. Katobi knew at that moment she was creating a lifelong, voracious reader.

How about you? Who at work do you need to show you are in empathetic agreement with? What achievement of some other person do you plan to celebrate in the near future?

Perhaps you know someone who needs to think more deeply about this idea of caring accountability. Why not forward them the link to this blog post and have a discussion about it?