Leading in the Matrix-7 Ideas to Cultivate the Right Skills

April 11, 2012 By 5 Comments

The sub-topic in a recent research release by Global Consulting Firm, Hay Group, suggests the skills needed in effectively leading in matrixed environments (empathy, conflict management, influence and self-awareness) for those below senior management “proved to be scarce across Hay Group’s database.”

While the primary topic of the research release, “Women Poised to Lead in Matrix Work Environments” is provocative enough for me to have invited an executive from Hay Group to an upcoming episode of The Leadership Caffeine Podcast, it’s this secondary issue that truly lights my fuse and should light yours as well. (And OK, raise your hand if you didn’t intuitively suspect there was a gender difference for the above described attributes.)

If speed, adaptability, learning…and the need to innovate are more than buzzwords and corporate clichés, but in fact are the requirements for success in this fast-moving world, then building cultures, teams and people capable of succeeding in the matrix must be a priority.

This type of “stuff” tends to get lumped into the squishy, touchy-feely bucket by many leaders. That’s too bad, because the need for people who display those skills is critical, and the opportunities for those who cultivate and apply them, nearly endless. 

7 Ideas to Promote Better Matrix Leadership Skills Across the Organization:

1. Build a common vocabulary for the matrix leadership skills. Terms like emotional and social intelligence, empathy and influence are not foreign to most of us, but our definitions and understanding of them are often very different. Ensure that you identify and describe the behaviors that reflect those skills as well.

2. Don’t immediately relegate this cultural change issue of strengthening matrix leadership skills to an HR or Training task. Those groups are enablers and even stakeholders, but the CEO must be the Executive Sponsor and Champion of this culture change, and there’s much more to effecting culture change than simply creating a program or initiative in HR or Training.

3. Senior Executives need to model the behaviors. If Hay’s research applies and if your firm happens to be mostly male at the top, these behaviors/skills may not be on display. We love to mirror those in authority, and if “the do doesn’t match the tell,” talk of a culture change will be just that…followed by laughter and sarcasm.

4. Start small by working with the “integrators” in your organization. Consider working with groups of professionals who serve as integrators…those who primarily work across boundaries and who have the ability to influence broader groups. A great starting point…focus on training and coaching your project managers and work with them to bring approaches, tools and even accountability to their project groups.

5. Land and expand. Leverage the results of smaller and early initiatives to create awareness of and promote good matrix leadership behaviors by building tools (training, coaching models and accountability tools) to support strengthening of this cultural change. Move from the integrators to the managers, supervisors and team leaders.

6. Create heroes and heroic stories out of successful teams and individuals. Nothing supports a culture like heroic successes. Bring visibility to project teams and leaders who create value. This is a powerful means of building institutional memory.

7. Accept that what gets measured gets done. Find ways to assess performance and growth in matrix leadership skills. Expect to experiment here…but get started and keep improving.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The whole premise here is that speed, adaptability, the ability to motivate, inspire and succeed in an ever-changing and complex matrix environment is more and more the way firms and people work and succeed. If the premise holds, then it’s up to us as senior leaders to support the movement away from 19th century management approaches to something that looks and feels right for this squishy, ever-changing world we live and work in.

Oh, and by the way…for those of you waiting for your organizations to support your development here, cut it out. You own your own development. Strengthening your ability to lead in the matrix is a great place to start.

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

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. (download a free excerpt at Art’s facebook page.)

Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com/blog/

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Project Management Tagged With: , ,

Leadership Caffeine-Why You Might Want to Pause Before Voicing that Decision

April 2, 2012 By 2 Comments

image of a coffee cupThe next time an employee or a group is looking to you to make a tough decision, you might want to screw up your courage, boldly look at them and…say nothing.

Teaching others to employ effective decision-making processes is one of the most important and often ignored responsibilities of those in leadership roles. Unfortunately, training your team to look to you for the calls on how to fix problems and move forward is much easier than teaching your team members to stand on their own for most issues.

You are fighting inertia when you pause and look to someone else or to a group to process on a decision. More than likely, you’re in a leadership role specifically because those above you developed trust in your decision-making abilities. It’s part of what got you this far, and now, you’re being asked to pause and to teach. Not voicing your decision is likely much harder than making it.

Too many managers incorrectly wield their decision-making authority, either because they are particularly comfortable in this role, or, because they view it as a symbol of strength or even power. Some use decision-making authority to control others.

Almost counter-intuitively, it takes more strength to not make a decision for someone else, especially when the answer is clear. And as for power, the old adage of you have to give it to get it is particularly relevant here.

7 Reasons Why You Should Back Off and Let Others Make Decisions:

1. Placing the responsibility for decisions on others is a sign of confidence and respect.

2. Showing others you are comfortable delegating decision-making enhances your leadership credibility.

3. Nobody learns anything when you make the decision.

4. You’re not always the smartest one in the room, even if you’re in charge.

5. The point in time when someone asks you what to do is one of those powerful teaching and developmental moments. Don’t squander it.

6.  You are able to assess where people and teams are at based on how they approach and make decisions.

7. Your skillful use of questions in lieu of immediate answers, helps people understand what’s important and how decisions potentially impact goal achievement.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

While I suggest pausing (in non-emergency situations) instead of offering up your quick solution, you still own the responsibility for the decisions of your team and team members. There’s no shirking responsibility for outcomes, particularly for the tough calls. However, you are also on the hook for developing others, stimulating innovation and promoting high performance and all of these are better supported and more often realized when you teach others how to make decisions. We know that you know the answer. Your real test is whether you can teach others to reach an answer as good as or better than yours.

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

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.  Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

 

 

 

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , ,

Leaders, Principles and the Pursuit of High Performance Teams

March 28, 2012 By 2 Comments

“In high-performance teams, the leaders managed the principles and the principles managed the teams.” –Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto via Jim Highsmith in Agile Project Management-Creating Innovative Products.

Larson and LaFasto in their assessment of high performance teams offer us a profoundly powerful and simple to comprehend answer to the question of how to support the emergence of effective teams: clear, strong, actionable, livable principles beget an environment for effective collaboration and innovation.

Every high performance team I’ve experienced as a participant, a sponsor or an outside advisor, was governed by an overarching set of principles or values that formed and framed the culture. And while good words alone don’t create success, the combination of the leaders and participants living and acting according to those words everyday made things work.

On successful teams, the team leaders…and ultimately the participants eat and drink the principles for breakfast, communicate them constantly and most importantly, they live them in how they collaborate, problem-solve and challenge themselves and their team members forward in pursuit of success.

And since as we all know, even the best of teams face dark days when nothing goes right, the guiding principles serve as bedrock for self-reflection and guidance for navigating the way forward.

There’s a cautionary tale here. As Highsmith warns us, “Grand principles that generate no action are mere vapor.”  When engaging with an organization for the first time, I make it a habit to understand a firm’s values, and all too often, what I find are nice words…unarguable in their intent, that serve only to occupy space on a wall in a conference room. It’s a wholesale failure on the part of the leadership of an organization, when the guiding principles aren’t a visible part of everyday life.

Teams are a fact of life. We execute strategy via projects. We innovate on teams. We develop new products, improve processes and search for ways to better serve our customers via projects and teams. We darned well better figure out how to succeed at this more often than not. Right now, in too many organizations, “not” is winning.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

This intangible, sticky, squishy topic of operationalizing guiding principles or values doesn’t lend itself well to a prescriptive list of steps-to-success. The onus is on you as a team leader, project leader, functional leader, informal leader or organizational leader to ensure that your best efforts are supported by meaningful, actionable guiding principles. If you can’t articulate what those principles are and what they mean for behavior, accountability and performance, then it’s time to take a step back and tackle this issue. The effort will pay dividends going forward. Larson and LaFasto are right…leaders should manage the principles and the principles will manage the team.

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

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.  Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

 

 

Filed Under: Leadership, Performance, Project Management, Strategy, Values Tagged With: , , ,

Leadership Caffeine-6 Reasons Why You Should Pass on the Happy Hour Invite

March 26, 2012 By 32 Comments

image of a coffee cupJust say “No” to the post-work invite from the team to join them for a beer. While you’ll feel torn because you enjoy social time as much as the next person, pay attention to that little voice in your mind trying to get your attention with, “You shouldn’t, you’re the boss.”

No moralizing here. I’ve simply known too many who shut this voice out and paid with their credibility and on a few occasions, their jobs.

I understand  that this philosophy is likely to result in my winning “Curmudgeon of the Year,” in the leadership blogger category, however, I’ll wear that label with honor if it helps keep a few more of you from showing your team what you’re really like when you let your hair down.

Six Reasons Why You Should Skip the Post-Work Happy Hour:

1. No one really wants you there. Harsh, I know, but the truth hurts. Some dumb a@@ do-gooder suck up employee thought it would be OK to invite you, against the entire team’s better judgment. They want downtime and your presence changes the situation.

2. People get stupid when they drink. You don’t need to see and hear that. The images WILL impact your perception of people and that’s not fair to you or your employees.

3. You’re not one of the gang anymore. Yeah, you were one of the gang a few months ago, but that relationship changed when you took the promotion. There’s no going back.

4. You’ll pay if you cross the wrong line. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen a manager cross the line of “one too many” and proceed to cross some line that offended one or more.  Do that just once in front of the troops and your talk of accountability and values will fall on deaf ears forever.

5. Your legacy requires that no one see you drunk. Get drunk in front of the team just once and the primary image the team will retain is one that involves you spilling drinks all over yourself while slurring your words and hitting on one of your employees. Whether you make CEO (unlikely if you frequent too many Happy Hours), or go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, there’s no flossing this view of you out of their minds.

6. You’re always on the clock. In spite of the common sentiment that what you do on your own time is your business, if you’re doing it around direct reports, you’re never off the clock.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Bonding with your team is critical. The best way to do this is by fighting ferociously every day to help them succeed as individuals and as a group.  Create workplace social opportunities…bring in lunch, sponsor some creative field trips and do everything you can to be accessible and approachable. However, when it comes to the spontaneous post-work gatherings at a local watering hole, thank them for the invite and make certain you have something else to do.

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

Art Petty is a Chicago-based management consultant focusing on strategy and leadership development. Art regularly speaks on innovation in management and leadership, and his work is reflected in two books, including the recent, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.  Art publishes regularly at The Management Excellence blog at http://artpetty.com

Prior to his solo career, Art spent 20+ years leading marketing sales and business units in systems and software organizations around the globe. You can follow Art on twitter: @artpetty and he can be reached via e-mail at art.petty@artpetty.com

 

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , ,

Energy, Engagment and Some Science to Support High Performance Team Development

March 21, 2012 By 2 Comments

As a lifelong team participant and now devotee of leveraging the power of teams, I was fascinated and excited to see the article, “The New Science of Building Great Teams,” in the April, 2012 issue  of Harvard Business Review. (Subscription required for the full article…or check out the related HBR Blog Content for free.)

I suspect we are all for adding some science to the sticky, squishy and often problematic issue of how to get people to not only play nice together in the sandbox, but how to do so at a sustained high-level of performance.

While not to trivialize the findings of this extensive, sensor based, sociometric study, the authors engage in what seems to be a a great deal of razzle dazzle to conclude that levels of energy, engagement and exploration are the keys to assessing whether a team will perform at a high level or not. Raise your hand if you didn’t know that…and then excuse yourself from class.

Perhaps their most telling statement is: “A skeptic would argue that the points about energy, engagement and exploration are blindingly obvious.”  OK, I admit to feeling like I needed sunglasses at that less than startling conclusion.

In fairness, the authors continue beyond blindingly obvious with: “But the data from our research improve on conventional wisdom. They add an unprecedented level of precision to our observations, quantify the key dynamics and make them measurable to an extraordinary degree.”

OK. Again, I suspect we all can use some science and more precision in our work herding cats in pursuit of high performance.

A few additional points to ponder from the article:

  • 35% of the variation in a team’s performance can be accounted for by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members.
  • In a typical high performance team, members are listening or speaking to the whole group only about half the time…the other half being one-on-one conversations.
  • Social time is critical to team performance… “often accounting for more than 50% of positive changes in communication patterns.”

In an important statement (which admittedly gives me cause to pause), the authors offer: “Without the data there’s simply no way to understand which dynamics drive successful teams.”

Excitement but Healthy Cynicism:

Who among us doesn’t want some help in building high performance teams? This study is fascinating for its potential, yet a bit frustrating in the “blindingly obvious” outcomes. The key it seems (and as the authors suggest) is to look deeper into the study outcomes for the insights that will lead to new approaches to building and managing. I’m interested and I suspect every student and practitioner of management is interested as well.

A quarter century of living on and with teams tells me that the dynamics change for every situation. I’m a bit uncomfortable imposing data and potentially inferring causation from correlation on something as complex as human interaction in varied situations. It might be easier to predict the weather accurately and consistently. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful we’ll gain some insights that can be applied in the workplace from projects like this one.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I’m cheering for the authors of this type of research so don’t misconstrue my intent in the post. You’re getting my blink reaction. I need to read this article a few times to gain more insight beyond the “blindingly obvious” indication that the level (and quality) of energy, engagement and exploration relate to a team’s success. In particular, we all need to look for ideas and tools we can use from big, data-driven studies like the one behind this article.

For the moment, the best outcome for me is a firm, data-driven reminder that energy, engagement and exploration are critical. Now, how do we do a better job promoting the right kind of all three for that critical new innovation project? And that ERP implementation? And the new product development project? And the web site relaunch? And the sales force restructuring. And the… .

 

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Project Management Tagged With: ,
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