Beware Contracting “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease?
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
It’s time to add another malady to the long list of things that bedevil the many lousy leaders walking unencumbered through our workplaces. It’s called, “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” (IRYW) disease, and while it’s not fatal, it’s clearly annoying to people and debilitating to performance.
Frankly, leaders that suffer from IRYW disease just piss other people off, while stifling creativity and innovation and casually squashing the souls of everyone they encounter.
IRYW sufferers take on many forms, depending upon how far along the disease is in warping their personalities. You might recognize it in one of the following forms:
- The boss that encourages input but never takes it. Ever.
- The boss or co-worker that gets visibly angry when someone disagrees with him/her.
- The manager that habitually throws dissenters under the bus.
- The manager or co-worker that always has to have the last word.
- The leaders that look at you as if you’ve grown two heads when you gather up the courage to share an idea or offer an alternative option.
Unfortunately, we run into this malady in our personal lives as well. We almost all have the relative or friend that is the self-anointed expert and this can be particularly problematic in households when it is a significant other or even an in-law. Feel free to offer up your own coping strategies from these examples…we’ll all learn in the process.
How You Can Avoid Catching “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease:
-Take a daily dose of humility. Remind yourself when you walk in the door that your role is to help others to succeed, not to show everyone how smart you are.
-Set up an early warning system. While granted that it takes a fair amount of emotional intelligence to recognize that this is good, many brilliant and successful leaders cultivate peer relationships where they encourage feedback, including the “quit acting like a jerk” kind. I’ve had two of these colleagues for years, and their occasional clubbing over the head has been remarkably helpful.
-While it’s cliché, hire people smarter than you. Do this right and you’ll not only gain the benefits of their considerable intelligence, but you’ll double your efforts to help them and earn their respect, as you certainly won’t be able to play and get away with IRYW.
-Stay out of environments where you might be tempted to incorrectly assert yourself and damage the group dynamics. Some bosses have no business in group brainstorming sessions. If you’re one, find something else to do.
Surviving a Boss with “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” Disease:
-Recognize that for this individual, it’s really important to feel like they are right. Since were not psychologists here, we’ll have to pass on analyzing childhood issues or assessing other compensating factors and fous on developing some patience.
-A fair number of IRYW sufferers are harmless. They revel in their own seeming brilliance, but their survival instinct allows them to accept ideas and input…especially if they think they prompted the ideas. Again, we’re not psychologists, but you should use some psychology here. Hey, if you are as smart as you think you are, this one should be easy!
-For those that are in the advanced and more dangerous stages of IRYW, this is truly a challenge. I have no qualms attempting to give my boss quality feedback, even if I’m politely telling her that she is an ass, but in these lean job times, many will shy away from that tactic. Either develop moral courage, developing a coping strategy or start looking.
-If this boss provides you latitude to do your work, stay out of his/her way, execute, provide clear, formal updates and if you face a controversial decision, ask for input. Your very professional demeanor may have a neutralizing affect (to some extent) and your asking for input is a reasonable form of managing upwards in this case.
If you as readers have any other advice, we’re all ears!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Make no bones about it, my emphasis is on working with good people wanting to become great. The failing in all of the writing and talking about effective leadership is that the lousy leaders rarely pay attention and definitely don’t recognize themselves. To those non-readers, enjoy your life For those of you aspiring and growing as professionals, take this as a polite reminder that you don’t need to be right all of the time. If you suddenly finding everyone agreeing with you, you may want to phone a friend and ask for a quick attitude adjustment.
Leadership Caffeine-Learning to Lead in the Project-Focused World
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Management Education, Performance, Project Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
The rise of “the project” as an important means of competing and creating value has profound implications for those in leadership roles. Unfortunately, in many cases, the evolution in leadership practices has not kept pace with the needs of project teams or the needs of organizations struggling to develop competence at executing on projects.
Our traditional models of leadership emphasize the development of skills and practices that focus on individuals and teams generally operating under the umbrella of a single functional leader. However, firms moving towards a project-focused culture tend to start by overlaying a matrix form project management structure on top of the traditional functional orientation. This new and non-traditional environment offers a host of new problems and challenges for leaders used to being masters of their own domains.
As a sidebar, while the project management discipline is well established and the role of the formal project manager is growing in importance and popularity, both my own anecdotal evidence and the many reports and studies on project performance indicate that we’ve not yet cracked the code on managing projects for success. In my work as a consultant and as a project management educator at the graduate level, I have few qualms in suggesting that the majority of the organizations that attempt what I’ve described above…imposing a matrix format on a functional orientation, struggle and flounder with their projects. Leadership or the lack of appropriate leadership support is a key issue in project failure.
8 Suggestions for Leading and Succeeding Inside the Project Matrix
- First, recognize that the rules of the game have changed. Your mission is no longer about optimizing results within your functional boundaries. Your emphasis is on providing resources and support for teams that aren’t yours.
- You enhance your position by supplying the strongest possible talent for work on project teams, not by hoarding this talent for your own purposes. Pony up.
- Your talent development efforts must now incorporate the development of skills and experience working within the matrix. Translation: you need to help teach and develop individuals that are comfortable and competent working on multiple initiatives for multiple teams.
- From time to time, complex project challenges will require your functional area’s direct support for resolution. This is a time for you and your colleagues to shine. Run, don’t walk and offer your help.
- Be aware of fluctuations and perturbations in the matrix. The brunt of the stress and complexity falls on the people doing the work. Communication, problem-solving, negotiation and prioritization are all complex in a matrix environment, and you can help by stepping in and facilitating solution development. Your efforts to reduce stress and complexity will pay off in the form of increased team performance and improved project execution.
- Hug a project manager today. OK, maybe not literally, but it’s a great practice to reach out and cultivate a relationship with your firm’s project managers. These busy individuals are at the epicenter of a firm’s key initiatives and have a unique view on the challenges, opportunities and the organization’s talent pool. Plus, develop a good reputation for supporting the project managers and this will pay dividends when you are looking for support for initiatives that impact your area of responsibility.
- Leverage the emerging project environment to expand your reach and grow your career. Top management is looking for leaders that understand how to help make things happen in an increasingly complex and hostile global marketplace. Your active involvement and contribution to project team success will highlight that you’ve moved beyond yesterday’s approaches to leading.
- Master the role of project sponsor. If you are at the level where you are eligible to serve as a project sponsor, sign-on and do everything possible to help the project succeed. Don’t make the common mistake of viewing this role as a token or honorary position. Good sponsors work hard to support their project teams. And don’t forget the Kevlar vest for others outside your project team that will have plenty of reason to take aim should things go wrong. This is the time when great sponsors shine.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Never turn down an opportunity to enhance your leadership skills. The increasingly important project-orientation of organizations offers a myriad of opportunities for you to develop new skills and try on new approaches. You can remain stubborn and insist on leading from a functional view-point, but in this case, your view might just be from the back of the unemployment line. It’s time to enter the matrix.
Suddenly, Deming is Relevant Again
Filed under: Career, Crisis Leadership, Current Affairs, Leadership, Leading Change, Management Education, Performance, Professional Growth, Quality Systems Management, Social Commentary, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
If you are a younger reader, the man that I am referencing in this post is W. Edwards Deming, the late and in my opinion, great management philosopher and consultant. Dr. Deming is certainly well known in quality circles (bad pun intended), but scour today’s current management books and if you’re lucky, you might find an occasional reference. Fascinating treatment of a man that inspired and guided the rebuilding of a country (Japan) and that spent his last years trying to “keep American companies from committing suicide.”
Through no fault of their own, my recent informal polling of some really sharp university students (undergraduate and graduate), I found through the “show of hands” method that very few had ever heard of Deming, and those that knew the name didn’t really know much about him.
I refuse to let a group of talented emerging professionals run through any management course of mine without spending some time with Deming, and introduced them via a 15-minute interview that he conducted in 1984, entitled “Management’s Five Deadly Diseases.” I encourage you to do the same. It’s fifteen minutes of pure Deming in his affected, slow and hard to understand speaking-pattern, filled with wisdom for managers that transcends time. I’ve added this and a few other readings to your homework list below.
Following my Tuesday night showing of this video, I caught up with one of my favorite management thinkers, Bret Simmons at his Positive Organizational Behavior blog in a great post, “Toyota’s Quality Mess: What Would Deming Say?” Bret and I exchanged some notes reinforcing the impact that Deming’s work has had on both of us in our careers.
Homework for Your Career:
If you are curious to learn more and improve your understanding of the role of a manager and perhaps improve your performance, consider this homework list:
- Read my post: “Sixty Years of Deming and American Managers Forgot to Pay Attention,” and Bret’s post on “What Would Deming Say?”
- Visit the Deming Institute and learn more about his “Theory of Profound Knowledge” and his “14 Points for Management.”
- Watch the interview above on “Management’s 5 Deadly Diseases.”
- And if you’re really into it, find a copy of “Out of the Crisis” and shudder at the parallels and still relevant lessons.
The Bottom Line for Now:
I’m most definitely in the camp that says that the science and art of management have not moved forward much in the past 100 years and that has to change. I’m also critically concerned about learning from the past and understanding the wisdom of those that came before us. We’ve not yet moved beyond the flaws and failings that Deming saw clearly in the management practices of the industrial revolution. And in fact, the only way that we will move forward is through conscious effort, or should I say, “constancy of purpose.”
You owe it to yourself, your career and your firm to understand and learn from this great man. I’ve outlined the homework. The test results will be visible at the end of your career.
February Leadership Development Carnival
Filed under: Career, Fresh Voices, Innovation, Leadership, Leadership Carnivals, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Management Education, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Thanks to Mark Bennett and the great people at Talented Apps for hosting the February, 2010 Leadership Development Carnival. Take a stroll through the Carnevale di Venezia Edition (you’ll have to click over to understand the creative tie-in to the Carnival in Venice) and check out some truly intriguing, inspiring and compelling posts from bloggers old and new. OK, instead of old, perhaps I should say familiar!
I’m honored to be a part of the Carnival and grateful to Mark and team for all of their effort in bringing us this outstanding content from some of today’s most exciting leadership thinkers and writers.
Enjoy!
The Three C’s and One D of Great Hiring According to Small Business Owners
Filed under: Career, Making Decisions, Management Education, Organizational Transformation, Performance, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Experienced small business owners and managers understand the critical importance of making great hires. The right people propel your business and the wrong ones cost you precious time and money. The wrong hires ring up expensive opportunity costs by making less than optimal decisions, inappropriately leading or misleading your teams and not helping you create value and gain a competitive advantage.
There’s an entire industry and ample science and psychology behind the various tools and approaches for assessing personalities, gauging intelligence and conducting interviews that systematically uncover the real individual. That’s all good and important…especially the behavioral interviewing part, however, most small and mid-sized business owners and managers that I know, make key hiring decisions more on gut feeling than on the output of rigorous assessment practices and tools. And while some have finely tuned “hiring guts,” a good number of owners and managers lament the bad calls and the lack of access to help.
I spoke to a number of owners running visibly successful firms and asked for their insights on hiring talent on their teams. The roll-up of their advice is as follows (I paraphrase):
-Understand the nature of the position and your expectations for the individual in that position today and five years from now. Hire people that have the intelligence, acumen and drive to both grow the role and grow with the role.
-A caveat to the first point: don’t be cheap now or you’ll pay for it later. Invest in the right talent today, even if it means paying more than you had hoped for. The right person will pay dividends almost immediately and long into the future.
And importantly, hire for the 3 C’s and 1 D: Character, Critical Thinking Skills, Communication Capabilities and Decision Making Acumen.
-Character: look for evidence through behavioral interviewing and reference checking of core values, handling of ethical dilemmas and commitment to the development and support of others. It’s not hard to discern someone that’s in it for themselves and “win at any costs” versus someone with a more externally oriented focus. One business owner likes to evaluate people by how they compete as part of athletic teams. He’s been known to invite a potential male hires to his weekly basketball game at the Y.
-Critical Thinking Skills: truth be told, the phrase is mine and not one used directly by the business owners that I spoke with, but the meaning is the same. People are looking for individuals that see big pictures or that recognize patterns from the noise in the environment. They make sense out of chaos and are capable of forming plans to exploit the chaos to their firm’s advantage. These are the people that dream up new products, come up with new ways of marketing and selling or see opportunities for gaining efficiencies through improved processes. It sounds lofty, but it can be as simple as the example below.
One manager describes looking for any signs that the individual attacks problems with non-traditional solutions. “I would rather hear a potential sales rep tell me how she landed the deal by investing a business day observing the customer’s team and then tailoring the proposed solution based on what she learned, versus a rep that plays only by the price book. The latter are a dime a dozen.”
-Communication Capabilities: One comment: “I hire people that build credibility every time they open their mouths. I want to be impressed by what they ask and how they answer. It shows me how they think, it provides insight into their character and it tells me whether they have the gray matter that I need to grow my business.”
Another indicated, “I hire great communicators and it starts with how well they listen. If someone proves to me that they are a good listener and that they understand that when someone else is talking, their only job is to understand the real intent of the person talking,” I want to hire that person.
Still another offered that she looks carefully beyond the resume and how an individual expresses himself/herself in writing. “I want to understand the complete communicator, and too often, we forget to look at how an individual presents himself in writing. This is an important indicator of intelligence for me.”
-Decision Making Acumen: Again, my phrase, but consistent agreement. One individual summed it up best: “I look for the individual’s examples of tough decisions. What were the stakes? How did she assess risk? How did she gather her data? Who’s opinion did she seek? How fast did she act?”
Another commented: “It’s important for me to understand how people deal with bad decisions. Some are convinced that they can fix anything and will continue to pursue a clearly bad course of action. Others understand that accepting a bad decision and learning from it is the right next step. If I can find good examples of how someone handled genuine mistakes, I gain great insight into an individual’s approach to business and leadership.”
The Bottom-Line for Now:
You can do much worse than improving your ability to gauge the 3 C’s and a D. Character, communications capabilities, critical thinking skills and decision making acumen are the raw materials required for individual and organizational success. Here’s to your hiring health!
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