New Leader Tuesday-Job One is to Strengthen Others

May 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment

newleadertuesdaygraphic“Long before empowerment was written into the popular vocabulary, exemplary leaders understood how important it was that that their constituents felt strong, capable and efficacious.” Kouzes & Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Strengthen others.

It’s the advice no one gives you on day one.  Or, day 1000.

It’s more than advice. It’s your mission.

Early in our career our focus is on the individual staring back at us in the mirror. We’re preoccupied with engineering our own success.

And then at some point, some boss decides to make us responsible for the work (and career steps) of others. Everything has changed, yet all too often, we continue to smile back at the increasingly successful person in the mirror. 

It’s time to shift the view.

It’s not easy to move from a self-focused professional to someone who suddenly is measured by the success and growth of his or her team members.

Recognition is the first step. Too bad it’s a step that many team leaders and functional managers never make. The urgent and the urgent unimportant distract them from their rarely or never-discussed mission of strengthening others. People become tools to make numbers and complete tasks.

In reality, people are the instruments of creativity, innovation and sustainable success.

6 Helpful Reminders for Your Mission to Strengthen Others

1. You must break the mirror you’ve been staring into looking for signs of success. It’s not about you. It’s what you can do to support the learning and growth of those around you.

2. You need to change your measure of success. You will be successful if your team members feel “strong, capable and efficacious” as Kouzes and Posner share in the quote above.

3. “Strengthening Others” isn’t code for being soft. On the contrary, it comes through holding people accountable, pushing them beyond their perception of their capabilities and providing experiences that lead to experimentation, occasional failure and frequent learning.

4. Remember: teach, don’t tell. The leaders who get this right are teachers first and bosses second.

5. If you fail today, you can fix it tomorrow. There’s no expiration date on this mission.

 6. See number 5. You will fail many times. This is hard work.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

At different points in your life, you’ll shift your own personal definition of success. The day you gain responsibility for the work of others is one of those points.

–

More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

Filed Under: Leadership, New Leader Tuesday Tagged With: ,

Leadership Caffeine-Coping with Critics in the Workplace

May 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

image of a coffee cupIf the flak is heavy, you’re near the target. (No flak, no target) –Eric Lieberman and Paul Byrne “Lessons from the Memphis Belle”

A retired senior executive offered to me that the biggest accomplishments of his teams during his career were preceded by the loudest and often personal gibes of his critics:

“It was surprising and disappointing that supposedly rational people and colleagues would work so hard to attack me as a means of attacking my ideas and the programs of my teams. I turned that disappointment into anger and then finally resolve to push forward. The critics provided the fuel for our ultimate success.”

Actors, writers and artists aren’t the only ones who have to cope with the slings and arrows of outrage or superficial praise from those looking in from the outside. As a business or function manager and someone responsible for leading others, those ready to offer their thoughts on what you’re doing wrong are never far away.

Push beyond the edge of the status quo and the critics multiply. Propose something unique and the background chatter heats up.  Hire talent that doesn’t fit the culture’s preconceived notion of “normal” and you’ll fuel the gossip fires.

While the volume and severity of the flak varies from organization to organization, it’s always there…sometimes a bit more stealth-like and at other times visible as a full-scale onslaught of criticism. When the flak gets heavy, it’s important to have a good coping strategy.

7 Ideas to Help You Deal with the Flak and Keep on Flying Towards Your Target:

1. Recognize that workplace criticism is often about fear of change and less about alternative ideas.  Never discount the gravitational pull of the status quo. When you threaten this force with change, fear promotes a variety of reactions, including criticism.

2. Beware cultivating a sense of creeping self-doubt when faced with criticism. Critics are great at making us doubt ourselves. Remember the benefits you are chasing and just focus on executing your mission.

3. Resist the urge to immediately fire back after receiving a barrage of criticism. If you perceive you must engage with a critic, choose a time and place when you’re not emotionally agitated. Above all, back away from the keyboard and avoid crafting that angry e-mail response you’ll regret as soon as you hit send.

4. Respect constructive criticism and alternative ideas from your stakeholders. Seek out the critics offering this form of input and strive to understand and where appropriate, incorporate their perspectives. Dialogue reduces friction.

5. Don’t be naïve and tune out the critics with political heft. These individuals merit attention and engagement. Start face-to-face and focus on uncovering interests, not arguing over positions.

6. Know that some critics just want to be involved. In your best Art of War approach, bring a critic on to the project team and give him or her an opportunity to contribute.

7. Resist bowing to the tyranny of consensus to silence the critics. Too many managers respond to criticism by conceding on their vision and diluting their ideas to the point of uselessness. No one gains in this situation.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Change of any form is difficult to realize in most organizational settings. It takes courage of conviction and a strong dose of self-confidence to absorb the flak from the naysayers. Cultivate an active coping strategy to dodge, deflect or counter the flak as the situation merits.  And remember the target of your mission. If you’re taking flak, you must be getting close!

 –

More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Getting Ahead, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Leading Change Tagged With: , ,

Leadership Caffeine: 5 Ideas to Bring Strategy to Life on Your Team

May 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

image of a coffee cupFew concepts in business generate more consternation for managers operating below the C-level, than strategy. Poll your team members or peers, and I’m confident that in most organizations, at least one (or more) of the themes will emerge:

We don’t have a strategy.

The executives talk about strategy, but I don’t see how it connects to my job.

The executives are working on strategy.

It seems like we have conflicting strategies. Everything’s important.

Our strategy is to grow. That’s how we get paid.

Quite often, the cause of the comments above isn’t the absence of a strategy, but rather the absence of a clear communication and execution link between the strategy framework developed by the executives and the organizational game plan required to implement strategy.

Regardless of your level in the organization, you have a responsibility to find ways to create a direct link between your team’s priorities and your firm’s ability to make money, create and satisfy customers and beat competitors. Here are a few ideas to help you span this gap.

5 Ideas to Help Bring Strategy into Focus for Your Team:

1. Create opportunities for executives to meet with your team about marketplace trends. While calendars might be tight at the top of the pyramid, any executive worth his/her salt loves to spend time with teams talking about customers, competitors and improving and growing the business. Make certain your team is prepared with an ample supply of great questions about market trends, customer needs and competitor actions. (See my short-list of thought-prompters below.) Run a debrief session where you and your team members connect the dots to your own work.

2. Bring customer-facing colleagues into your operating meetings. No executives to be found. No worries. Invite a customer-facing colleague to share insights and updates from the field at your regular team meeting. Once again, encourage your team members to be prepped with an ample supply of questions.

3. Don’t forget your boss! Redouble your efforts to understand the boss’s goals and performance indicators. While this still might leave you one degree of separation from your firm’s actual strategy, knowing your boss’s goals and connecting them to your team’s goals and metrics will improve alignment and support more effective execution on key activities.

4. Put a filter on it. Put a strategy filter on investment or new project requests from your team members. Encourage and challenge your team members to connect the ask to the customer, corporate goals or beating competitors. Encourage your team to actively prioritize their investment needs, and make certain that those that are selected have a clear connection to the firm’s goals.

5. Make ad hoc marketplace monitoring a regular part of your team’s activities. Regardless of where you and your group operate inside the organization, there are no rules that say you can’t become and remain market savvy.  Make competitor, customer and marketplace monitoring a part of your team’s activities and meet regularly to talk about what you are hearing and seeing. Make certain that everyone connects their observations to, “What I think this means for our firm is… .”  Importantly, find opportunities to reflect this discussion and debate in decisions and prioritization.

The Bottom-line for Now:

If there’s a solid strategy lurking somewhere in the C-Suite waiting to be set free, your job is to help make that happen. If you’re operating in a strategy desert, your job is to help bring some market and customer focused context to your team’s work. Regardless of your firm’s situation, the work of connecting activities to meaningful actions falls on your shoulders.

A Short-List of Thought-Starter Strategy Questions for Your Team:

  • How do we make money as an organization?
  • What’s happening with our customers/competitors that will impact our business? How will we be impacted and what can we do to leverage this situation?
  • What are the key business problems our customers are trying to solve and how can we help them?
  • What have we done in the marketplace to disrupt competitors?
  • What moves have our competitors made to disrupt us?
  • Do we sound and look the same as our competitors? (Can our customers describe why they like us versus our competitors?)
  • What can we do more of that will help us better serve customers and beat competitors?
  • What can we do less of without hurting our position in the marketplace?
  • How are we going to measure our progress in the market?

–

More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

 

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Strategy Tagged With: , , ,

New Leader Tuesday-10 Things I Learned the Hard Way About Leading

May 7, 2013 by 2 Comments

newleadertuesdaygraphicExperience is clearly the best teacher when it comes to learning to lead. However, there are a few items that I wish someone would have pointed out before I tripped all over myself earlier in my career. Forewarned is forearmed!

At Least 10 Things I Discovered the Hard Way About Leading:

1. This job would be easy if it weren’t for the people. People are all that we have. You need to truly like working and helping others to develop as a leader. If you don’t, stick to your role as individual contributor.

2. It’s easy to spend too much time with the wrong people. The high potentials merit the bulk of our time, yet the ratio often gets flipped as we spend much of our time chasing the poor performers.

3. Hire slow, promote fast and fire fair and fast. When it’s your turn to select talent, you can’t afford to misfire. (Everyone does at some point.) When you do make a bad selection, fix the problem. Fast. And when you get it right, run, don’t walk to put good people into growth roles.

4. People fundamentally don’t change. Regardless of your leadership magic, you can’t change a person’s core values, beliefs and behaviors. You might gain momentary compliance, but long-term, sustainable change must come from within an individual. Don’t count on it happening at the speed you need.

5. Feedback is the most powerful performance tool in your toolkit. Too few of us are trained on how to get it right. Invest in yourself and cultivate your feedback skills early in your career.

6. Recognize that everyone on your team is watching and judging you. If the “do doesn’t match the tell,” you’ll lose credibility. Credibility is key when it comes to leading, and it’s incredibly hard to build and nearly impossible to regain once it’s lost.

7. Clear expectations matched with accountability equals high performance rocket fuel. It’s your job to set clear and challenging expectations and promote accountability on your team. Fairly, equitably and always.

8. Paying attention to a person…showing interest in their work and their activities is a high form of showing respect. You’re never too busy to stop and talk and listen. People thrive when they are respected.

9. For too many leaders, the tendency is to talk, when it should be to listen. When you’re talking, you’re not really communicating…you’re just making noise.

10. Questions are more powerful than commands. Skilled leaders wield questions like a surgeon wields a scalpel. Learn to use questions as teaching tools instead of offering answers or barking commands.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

No list, book or course will serve as a substitute for good old-fashioned tripping all over yourself. However, a few pointers along the way might just minimize your time spent digging out from some of these character building experiences! Happy leading!

–

More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

 

 

Filed Under: Leadership, New Leader Tuesday

Art of Managing-Kick Mediocrity to the Curb in Pursuit of Extraordinary

May 6, 2013 by 6 Comments

ArtofManagingMediocre is on display daily in too many areas of our society and in too many of our businesses. From the boss who just doesn’t care to our government seemingly barely functioning to the miserable help-lines of too many firms to the slow gait…the shuffle of retail workers at organizations that definitely don’t care, ordinary and average are epidemic.

Mediocrity has a way of numbing our senses and taking the fight out of us. It impacts everyone at all levels of leadership and all employee groups. Individually and collectively, we reduce our standards to the lowest accepted level and then shuffle along dispensing the ordinary until something shocks our system. Often, the shock comes too late.

As a manager, you play a critical part in either perpetuating mediocrity or helping your team break free in pursuit of extraordinary. The latter is a lot more fun and rewarding for all involved.

8 Ideas to Kick Mediocrity to the Curb in Pursuit of Extraordinary:

1. Start with the belief that your attitude and your actions will make a difference. In a world where mediocre is the norm, your extraordinary effort to help, serve, lead, please, thank, teach, manage, fix and engage will all be noticed. Not by everyone, but by many of us.

2. If your team works on the phone, teach them to lead with their smiles. Customers hear smiles over the phone and that helps us forget that we just navigated a 42-step phone-tree and a 36-minute wait seeking someone who could explain how to work a feature on the device in our hand that has more technology than the entire Apollo program which sent humans to the moon and successfully retrieved all of them.

3. If your team works in front of customers teach them to lead with direct eye contact and a smile. I don’t care if you are the manager at XYZ Big Box or the Shift Supervisor at the Driver’s License Bureau, the only downside of your employees smiling and making eye contact will be the fainting and momentary loss of equilibrium of your customers. They’ll recover and you’ll have changed the world in your own small way. (Note: in some cultures, direct eye contact is frowned upon. Let’s assume a U.S. based business.)

4. Extraordinary starts with the behaviors you model you set as a manager. Define “extraordinary” in your environment and then teach and model the behaviors. If you don’t, who will?

5. Set expectations for performance that is extraordinary.  Create a culture that enforces accountability for the right results and reward those who deliver.

6. Remember, extraordinary isn’t just for external customers. Model extraordinary across employee groups and watch it grow.

7. Eliminate those who don’t really care. Not everyone will respond to your guidance and teaching. Not everyone aspires to extraordinary. Encourage those who are comfortable with mediocrity to practice this approach by working for your competitors.

8. Make hiring for extraordinary a religion. Not everyone is suited to extraordinary in every environment. Your challenge is to identify those underlying values and behaviors that are so critical to transcending mediocrity in your world and then recruit and hire for those items. Few of us would pass Southwest Airlines’ rigorous filters for fun and love of people and Zappos is so committed to getting just the right people, the firm offers new employees a cash incentive to leave once they’ve completed the firm’s training program. In Zappos’ case, it’s cheaper and more productive to pay someone who isn’t feeling the firm’s definition of “extraordinary” to leave than to retain them and have them poison the well.)

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Kicking mediocrity to the curb doesn’t require expensive consultants, confusing restructuring or an epiphany around strategy. It’s common sense coupled with a strong sense of personal accountability to teach, model and reward the behaviors that promote extraordinary in your organization.

–

More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

 

 

Filed Under: Art of Managing, Leading Change, Management Innovation, Performance, Values Tagged With: , ,
Next Page»