Category Archives: Leadership

Quick summaries of practices to increase leadership capacity and capabilities.

Leaders enter the danger.

Leadership

Leaders don’t shy away from uncomfortable situations; they step right into the middle of them.  They enter the danger with courage to fearlessly deal with an issue that everyone else is afraid to address.  ~Patrick Lencioni

I should first clarify that when Patrick Lencioni made this statement he was actually referring to consultants as opposed to leaders.  I agree, this is great advice for consultants, but I also think it applies equally to leaders.

As I write this, I can think of numerous situations where clients are avoiding the elephant in the room.  In some cases it’s admittedly really difficult stuff, like a staff member who’s gravely ill but no one wants to talk about the implications of the work not getting done or even more importantly, the emotional impact it’s having on everyone, including the person who is ill.  In other cases it’s become a way of being or the modus operandi.  The issues are obvious, ranging from tension due to one or two team members who aren’t willing to be vulnerable and consequently it stifles any sense of trust among the team; or when there’s a blow-up between colleagues and they don’t apologize or talk it through, instead it’s handled very passively, essentially pretending like it never happened and we all just move on – or do we?

In some instances, I’ve seen these scenarios continue on for not only years, but decades.  Why do we put ourselves through this?  Why do we avoid this discomfort with such determination hoping that in time it will either resolve itself or simply go away?

There are probably a number of reasons.  One, and the most obvious, we just don’t like feeling uncomfortable.  We don’t like it so much that we’ll tolerate a lot of irritating discomfort until the situation turns into a crisis.  A physician friend once told me that he can tell patients what they need to do to improve their health but most don’t change their current M.O. until the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of getting better.  The same is true in organizations.  We’ll avoid addressing an issue or confronting a situation until the pain of avoiding it is greater than the pain of dealing with it.  Unfortunately, many times waiting until it reaches that point means someone may be asked to leave the organization.

Another reason we avoid these situations could be that we might have to face the reality that we, ourselves, contributed in some way to the uncomfortable situation.  The authors of Difficult Conversationsdistinguish between blame and contribution.  They say that blame is about judging, and looks backward, while contribution is about understanding, and looks forward.  The first question you should ask might be, “What did we each do or not do to get ourselves into this mess?”  The second question then might be “Having identified the contribution system, how can we change it?  What can we do about it as we go forward?”  Too often we deal in blame when our real goals are understanding and change.

As leaders, are we ready to enter the danger and fearlessly deal with an issue that everyone is afraid to address?  That elephant is going to stay with us until we gracefully and courageously coax it out of the room.

Leaders pay attention.

Leadership

There is power in paying attention.  And a poweris released in someone who knows he or she is being paid attention to.  ~Nancy Ortberg

I had a conversation with a woman last week that has stuck in my mind.  She told me to use a specific email address when contacting her because she checks that email about every six minutes.  That’s right, every six minutes.  I can attest to her accuracy because I sat next to her during her organization’s staff retreat.  Her smartphone never left her hands and she did check it about every six minutes and was responding to emails.  Now, in her defense, she recently spent a number of years working for Bill Gates and had clearly assumed the habits that were required, or really demanded, of the job.  She had to be “on” 24/7.  But old habits are clearly hard to break.  Did it feellike she was paying attention?  No.  Maybe she really could multi-task but you certainly didn’t feel as if you were being paid attention to.

I recently did a little experiment of my own to see how intently someone was focused on their phone as opposed to paying attention to the environment around them.  I was walking my dog on a Saturday morning.  We had stopped along the sidewalk so my dog could explore all the many things to smell in the grass.  I saw a young woman walking towards us, about half a block away.  She was extremely engrossed in whatever she was emailing or texting and coming straight at me.  No one else was around.  I decided to just stay right where I was on the edge of the sidewalk, not say anything, and see if she would lift her head to notice I was standing directly in her path.  Nope, she didn’t, and slammed right into me.  Did I receive an apology or an “excuse me”?   No.  Instead I got a glare of frustration that I was in her way and she continued on.

So what’s this got to do with leadership? 

Sometimes I wonder if organizations look a little like my Saturday morning dog walk.  We’ve not only lost the ability to really pay attention to one another, we’ve lost sight of the power of paying attention to one another as Nancy Ortberg so aptly pointed out.  How many times have you sat in a meeting only to see everyone attempting to discretely check their email under the table?  Or my favorite, apparently it’s now acceptable to suddenly leave the room and take a phone call.  The convenience of technology has robbed us of our ability to pay attention to those in the same room sitting next to us.  And we’ve forgotten the power of paying attention.

I haven’t done this, yet, but with each meeting I attend I become more and more tempted to start carrying a large bowl with me and then require everyone to deposit their iphone, smartphone, blackberry or whatever their preferred device in the bowl.  Everyone can retrieve their device at the close of the meeting.  But for the duration of our time sitting together, in the same room, we’re going to release some power and pay attention to one another.

Going back to Nancy Ortberg, the complete quote from her reads:

There is power in paying attention.  And a power is released to someone who knows he or she is being paid attention to.  Someone did it for you once.  Now it’s your turn.

Leaders get fresh.

Leadership

To get fresh, you have to break habits and do things differently.  This will keep your brain stimulated and will help you find flexible perspectives.  ~Chris Barez-Brown

While our habits bring a sense of security and predictability, they can also stifle creativity and lead to tunnel vision.  The final two words of the quote from Chris Barez-Brown – flexible perspectives – seemed especially descriptive of effective leaders.  Leaders certainly need to have a clear vision and focus in order to enable others to follow them to their destination.  But at the same time, they need to remain open to new and flexible perspectives so they can alter their course.  It’s very rare that the journey from where you are to where you want to be is a straight line, so having flexible perspectives to generate creativity and new ideas is critical to effective leadership.

Chris conducted an experiment.  He, somehow, persuaded 30,000 people to break their habits for five days, starting with simple things like sleeping on the other side of the bed or swapping their iPod with a friend’s.  More habits were added as the week progressed.

By the end of the experiment, he had received mountains of positive feedback about the way people felt – freer, with better ideas and more energy.

Chris provided an example of staying fresh from one of our century’s greatest idea generators, Steve Jobs.  We all know that Steve dropped out of college.  But he still took classes, just the ones he was really interested in.  One of those classes was calligraphy.  He was interested in it but had no reason to believe that it would be of any particular benefit to his life.  Years later when he was designing the Mac, it all came back to him.  That’s why the Mac had such unique typography and a new way of laying out symbols.  This became the benchmark for every computer in the world.

Several years ago I purchased a book that had to do with managing money written by Keith Cameron Smith.  I was interested in the topic, but I really bought it for the example the author provided that classified people into three different groups based upon what they talk about.  He used the example to categorize people by how much money they made, but as I read it and reread it again recently, I use the same categories to differentiate leaders from followers. 

Keith says there are three categories: a) those who spend most of their time talking about ideas, b) those who talk mostly about things (their stuff), and c) those who spend most of their time talking about other people.  It’s probably not surprising to learn that it’s the wealthy group who spend their time talking about ideas.  It wasn’t hard for me to immediately translate that same thinking to people in organizations.  There are the leaders – those who are focused on ideas and that’s what you hear them talking about.  Then there’s the mid-level or middle management staff, you’ll hear them talking about things – their to-do list, this project or that project, what needs to be fixed or repaired, etc.  Then the frontline or support staff you’ll hear talking about people – who did what, who took credit for something they did, and who is currently getting under their skin, etc.  

Get fresh.  Spend time talking about ideas.  Stimulate your brain with flexible perspectives.  

Effective leaders shift from corporate communication to organizational conversation.

Leadership

Conversationally adept leaders step down from their corporate perches and then step up to the challenge of communicating personally and transparently with their people.  ~ Boris Groysberg & Michael Slind

Groysberg and Slind’s conclusion about organizational conversation is a result of studying organizational communication through more than 150 interviews in 100 organizations—large, small, for-profit, nonprofit, etc.  The common theme heard over and over: moving toward a “conversation.”  Groysberg and Slind said:

Smart leaders today, we have found, engage with employees in a way that resembles an ordinary person-to-person conversation more than it does a series of commands from on high.  Furthermore, they initiate practices and foster cultural norms that instill a conversational sensibility throughout their organizations.  Chief among the benefits of this approach is that it allows a large or growing company to function like a small one.  By talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, leaders can retain or recapture some of the qualities—operational flexibility, high levels of employee engagement, tight strategic alignment—that enable start-ups to out-perform better-established rivals.

You’d think that in the age of abundant technology, we’d be communicators extraordinaire.  That’s not necessarily the case.  Groysberg and Slind said, “For many executives and managers, the temptation to treat every medium at their disposal as if it were a megaphone has proved hard to resist.”

As more distance separates me from the youngest members of our workforce, the generational differences become more evident.  And with each year, it seems, I appreciate more and more about the millennials and their fresh perspective of communication and corporate expectations.  The millennials expect both their peers and those in authority to communicate with them in a dynamic, two-way fashion.  By contrast, throughout my early years in the workforce in the late 80s and early 90s, the only options for communication were typewritten memos, print newsletters and speeches.  So not only did the old model of leadership promote a style of top-down, one-way communication, the only means of communication available fostered that same culture.    

The changes in communication have, no doubt, made many (or maybe most) of the assertive, control-freak baby boomers quite uncomfortable.  In the past, leaders would both create and control messaging, assuming that employees were passive consumers of their information.  But now, leaders have to actually let go and relinquish some of the control of content and even invite employees to actively participate in organizational messaging.  It’s a shift from corporate communication to organizational conversation.

In my day of being young in the workforce, leaders were essentially behind a barrier, almost a steel wall of sorts.  Communication would be shot out to the organization from behind the stockade of power and mystery.  Social media and technology, along with generational shifts, has broken through that stockade and is demanding communication that is personal, direct, authentic and trustworthy.  Welcome to the “conversation.”

Do you have the heart for leadership?

Leadership

Leaders know that difficult conversations are best accomplished with their head and their heart.  They understand that if they aren’t “openhearted,” the conversation can have a life of its own, and often one that isn’t pleasant. ~ Mary Jo Asmus

Mary Jo asks the question, “Have you ever heard ‘I’m going to have a head-to-head conversation’? Of course not, but this is what often happens in our organizations. Having a ‘heart-to-heart’ conversation is what’s most important when the topic is difficult. The words you will say aren’t enough (those come from your head); you need to also have an open heart.”

This idea of being openhearted reminded me of another word I heard someone use to describe tough situations – being tenderhearted.  For me, tenderhearted takes it to an even greater level and consequently, degree of difficulty.  Tenderhearted is defined by Webster’s as easily moved to love and compassion.  Maybe I can open my heart, but being tenderhearted may mean that I will actually let someone else touch my heart.

I’m sure I’ve lost a number of folks by now because I’ve taken this to a place of too much touchy-feely talk.  Why do we think that when we walk through the doors of our workplace that we’ve somehow left our humanity outside on the street?  Our humanity follows us everywhere, even into the walls of our office.  And for those of us who tout practices like servant leadership or transformational leadership, we better take notice of what it means to be tenderhearted if we are going to actually practice what we preach.

Let me illustrate.  I’ve recently come across a situation where an individual in a leadership position was berated by a couple of employees in an email conversation that made its way back to the leader.  [Don’t you love the way technology has become the number one tattle-tail in organizations today.]  The person at fault here has openly stated they made a mistake and can point to the exact moment when everything started to head south.  She has willingly agreed to talk with the leader, apologize and try to make things right.  The leader (as well as the leader’s supervisor) has said she shouldn’t have to go through that and has essentially refused to accept the apology or make an effort to reconcile the relationship.  She only wants discipline for this employee. 

I’m missing the tenderhearted piece in this picture.  This is an organization that espouses servant leadership.  Wouldn’t that mean not only seeking forgiveness but also accepting forgiveness when someone wants to apologize and try to make things right, despite how much we feel hurt or disrespected? 

Chuck Swindoll describes this as having a “tender heart and a tough hide.”  It could be that having a tough hide is a prerequisite to having a tender heart.  And what a great, concise definition of a leader – a tender heart and a tough hide.  Chuck then asks the question: How do you respond to criticism?  Are you tough and tender or do you become brittle and bitter?  Are you a leader of both grace and grit? 

Do you have the heart for leadership?