Best of Management Excellence: Trying Not to Fail is Not the Same as Striving for Success
Filed under: Leadership, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders
This post is excerpted from my collection: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. There’s a definite difference between focusing on not failing versus striving for success.
When we focus on not failing, fear rents most of the space in our mind, and we see monsters in need of slaying everywhere we turn. We lose track of the original vision that propelled our actions, and the sheer act of working becomes at best a passionless exercise and at worst, drudgery.
Lousy Leaders Thrive on Your Misery:
Sadly, many leaders provide fuel for the “don’t fail” machine through their actions. Show me a project team or functional group that exhibit all of the energy and passion of a collection of late-night television zombies, and I’ll guarantee there’s one or more tyrannical, micro-managing leaders at the source of the dysfunction.
The Scarlet “F
The “don’t fail” disease isn’t limited to the corporate world. I know small business owners and solopreneurs who have stepped into this gooey emotional muck during the past few years of economic unpleasantness. Instead of lessons-learned and fuel for problem solving and innovation, setbacks are worn for all to see as Scarlet F’s, where F stands for failure. Of course, what they forget is that no one can really see the Scarlet F’s unless they go out of their way to project them through their attitudes.
You Own Your Attitude:
Striving not to fail is like walking up to take your turn at bat when the only thought running through your mind is, “don’t strike out.” The last two words, “strike out” are all that you remember as you flail wildly at everything thrown your way.
If you’re caught up in an environment where an evil leader holds court, remember that you still own your attitude. While it’s not easy to escape the fog of uncertainty and doubt created by these characters, it’s unlikely that their attempts at mind control can survive in a pitched battle against your own good attitude.
If you are your own boss and you feel weighted down and exposed by the scarlet F’s you believe you are carrying around with you, it’s critical to rediscover the feelings of excitement, hope and opportunity that likely propelled you off on your own in the first place.
Rediscover or Reset Your Sense of Purpose:
Somewhere buried beneath the baggage and stress of the past few years, you had a sense of purpose that fueled your efforts. Whether it was providing for others or an intense desire to change the world, it’s important to scrape off the muck and recall that sense of greater mission.
Of course, we change over time, and what fueled us at one phase of life may not be so relevant at another stage. I know many people who have recharged their lives and their work as professionals by resetting their sense of purpose from a focus on success to an emphasis on making a difference for someone or some group.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
It’s easy to focus on failure. It’s a lot more fun, it’s a lot healthier and it darned well is a lot more inspiring to rationalize our efforts and actions and combat our demons in the context of our bigger purpose.
Those who focus on success see victory around every corner. They view obstacles and setbacks as minor challenges to be overcome on a longer journey towards something worthwhile.
No one can take away your sense of purpose, unless you let them. Focus your gaze clearly on the bigger picture and longer term, take a deep breath and then take the first step forward. You’ll quickly remember that steps taken with a purpose in mind are effortless.
Now, keep moving.
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Art Petty is a developer of leaders and a strategy consultant. Art frequently speaks on leadership and management, and his work is reflected in two books (Practical Lessons in Leadership and Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development) and over 1-million words published at The Management Excellence blog. You can reach Art via e-mail to learn more about his leadership development and management consulting services.
Leadership Caffeine: Motivate with Context
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Strategy, Surviving Lousy Leaders
Overheard:
Why are we doing this project?
I don’t know who is making these priority calls. They don’t make any sense.
We’re so far removed from the customer, no one notices what we do.
During my review, I was encouraged to innovate more. I don’t know what that means.
Context and the “Walk In the Door” Test:
In workshop settings, I frequently poll participants on what I call, “The Walk In the Door Test.” It goes something like this: “When you walk in the door in the morning, can you connect your priorities to the strategic priorities of your firm (or business unit)?”
I’m never surprised, but always disappointed that only about half of the participants admit they CAN connect their priorities to the important issues of their firm. The rest are honest (and frustrated) enough to admit in public, that they struggle with understanding the context for their work.
A few weeks ago, a corporate trainer indicated to me: “I’m not certain what the managers want their people to get out of the program, but I’m going to train them anyways.” Too bad for the participants.
Beware Context Deficit Disorder:
The employees quoted above, the disconnected and under-informed trainer and my honest survey respondents all share one thing in common…they all suffer from Context Deficit Disorder (CDD).
Too many mediocre managers and lousy leaders send their teams into battle on a daily basis armed with nothing more than a “go get ‘em,” and a metaphorical slap on the back. There’s no connection between the work and the key objectives of the firm or the pursuit of creating value for customers.
Think of the many mediocre (or worse) customer experiences you encounter in a typical week. There’s the inattentive server, the cashier who never makes eye contact, the grumpy phone support personnel or, my favorite, the guard dog receptionist you came up against at the doctor’s office. They all lack proper context for their work. (We’ll leave the doctor who rushes through your examination seemingly on a mission to set a new land-speed record for spending as little time as possible with patients, for another topic on another day!
These individuals lack context for the importance of their work and the impact they have on people who vote with their dollars and feet. I’ll dump the blame squarely on the shoulders of the managers who allow their people to engage with others without providing clarity for their mission and building in accountability for carrying it out in good form.
Forget the Posters and Cheerleading and Instead, Provide Clear Context:
We waste fortunes inside our organizations on misguided programs and oddball incentives, seeking ways to motivate and inspire people to work hard, innovate, create, care and to live up to their potential, when the real solution is literally on the tip of our tongues.
People do their best work when they understand how their work fits into the bigger picture. This is the critical context that fuels revolutions, promotes perseverance and encourages creativity. People working for a cause are exponentially more powerful than people working for a paycheck. Management by paycheck is little more than motivating people at the end of a gun barrel. Alternatively, management by context creates a sense of purpose that is essential for tapping into people’s extra stores of energy and their best creativity.
Of course, context comes in many sizes and shapes. I don’t necessarily expect the front-line cashier to be familiar with the nuances of the firm’s strategies, however, I do expect this individual to have an absolutely clear understanding of how customers help the business go and grow. Alternatively, the project manager leading a major new development initiative must understand how the project fits into the firm’s future plans to open new markets, capture more customers and beat competitors.
While the level and detail of context may vary by position and mission, it must be present for everyone all of the time.
5 Ideas for Curing Context Deficit Disorder
1. Establish connectivity. Never ask someone to do something with out linking the request to a clear business rationale.
2. Create forums to improve understanding. Provide opportunities for the people doing the work to ask questions about the value of the work.
3. Create forums to improve understanding, part 2. Don’t keep the strategic issues locked in a drawer. Share liberally on the big picture issues in your market and with your customers and involve people in translating high-level goals into meaningful and connected front-line activities. Help your people improve their “Walk in the Door Test” results!
4. Make metrics meaningful. If you are going to the trouble of developing scorecards and other systems of measurement, make certain you both share and explain the metrics to the people being measured.
5. Provide opportunities for the people doing the work to share ideas for improvement. And then let them implement these ideas.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
This topic reminds me of the old story about the workers moving a pile of rocks. When asked what he is doing, the first worker indicates, “I’m moving this pile of rocks from here to there.” The second one is asked the same question and responds, “I’m helping to build a cathedral.” I certainly know which one I want on my team. Do your employees and team members see the future cathedrals in their work at your organization?
Flim-Flam Man, If You Were a Motorboat, and Other Moronic Interview Adventures
Note from Art: I manage to be on the receiving end of frequent, horrific boss and interview stories from blog readers, twitter followers and colleagues around the globe. The level of what I describe as “moronocity” in the hiring community is off-the-charts, at a time when securing great talent has never been more important.
-Overheard: Business Owner to Prospective Marketing Employee:
“Walk around the business at your fastest working pace and find 3 branding inconsistencies.”
Upon returning, Owner to Prospective Employee:
“You were pretty slow. If you were a speedboat, what speed would you move at?”
The Ideal Response: “I don’t know, but why don’t you time me as I head out the door.”
-Overheard: British CEO in the U.S. to Prospective Executive Candidate:
“I never know whether to trust anything you Americans say. You all talk flim-flam.”
The Ideal Response after, “Huh?”: “Dude, did you seriously just insult everyone in America?”
-Overheard: HR Professional to Prospective Candidate after candidate asked for additional specificity on the job beyond the very brief ad.
“The ad was sufficient, you don’t need to know more than that.”
The Ideal Response: “You’re right, I don’t need to know anymore. Pretend I’m a motorboat and try and guess how fast I’m going as I head out the door!”
-Overheard: HR Professional during Reference Check to Candidate’s Valued Reference:
“No, we’re not certain exactly what the job entails yet, but why do you think she would be good for the job?”
The Ideal Response after, “Huh?”: “How fast do motorboats go?”
-Overheard: HR Professional after listening to glowing reference from a former boss of the candidate’s.
“Huh? Who are you talking about?”
The Ideal Response: I don’t know..I’m speechless on this one. Readers?
-Overheard: Speedboat Business Owner above responding to candidate’s question on how job performance will be measured.
Tersely: “How do you think it should be measured?”
The Ideal Response: “Take the average rate of a speedboat moving through your restaurant, multiply by 20, and then divide by the number of customers in a month and square the result.”
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Had enough yet?
At a point in time when great people have never been more essential to survival and success, I hear horror stories like this on a weekly basis. I wish I was making these up. They’re great examples of hiring professionals shooting themselves in both feet and then jamming the bloody stumps right in their own mouths.
While it’s a buyer’s market for warm bodies, it’s always a seller’s market for great talent. Great talent won’t tolerate those practices for a second.
May these hiring morons and horse’s hind ends suffer the torture of 1,000 incompetent boobs for their next hires.
Coming Soon: A Saturday Serial & A View from the Millennial Perspective
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leading Change, Performance, Professional Growth, Strategy, Surviving Lousy Leaders
Note from Art: Coming attractions and new features. Why? Because I cannot stand running in place.
The Power of a Story and a New Saturday Serial:
One of the lessons Rich and I learned in writing Practical Lessons in Leadership, was the power of stories for making points and stimulating good quality leadership discussion.
After writing the narrative for the book, we thought it would be nice to give the leadership content some additional context, and we formed a fictional company, Apex Integrated Technologies, Inc., complete with characters, strategic and operational issues and a lot of people challenges. In other words, it’s just like every other business in the world.
Our intent for including these stories in Practical Lessons was to provide fodder for discussion around the core chapter content. A mini-fable introduces each chapter and the discussions questions tie things together at the end. We also crafted our own perspectives on the questions and situations and make those available as a free download from my website.
According to feedback from readers…particularly companies and managers who have adopted Practical Lessons in Leadership as a tool for their book clubs and leadership development activities, the story approach works. The cases and questions add a richness and an element of reality to the practical leadership content found in the chapter.
It’s time for me to extend this idea to the blog.
The idea of leadership or management fable isn’t new…Lencioni, Goldratt and many others have popularized the approach in book form. My approach will be a bit different, blending an old publishing technique (the serial story) with the simplicity of hitting the submit button on my blog. Think Dickens and Little Nell meet modern publishing techniques!
This forthcoming Saturday series will explore current and vexing leadership issues from the perspectives of a variety of characters working in different but connected (competitors, partners, suppliers, customers) organizations in a mythical business ecosystem. And yes, each episode will end with some key questions about how to deal with the situation. You as readers are the consultants, advisors and coaches we will be looking to for your best guidance.
Life is a series of experiments, and I personally like the feel of this one. While I can write nearly endless posts about the issues of leadership and management, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to make the topics interesting, relevant and engaging. And yes, this is a nice convergence of my passion for management and leadership writing and my desire to write fiction. I’ll be learning how to write narrative on your time here. Thanks for you help! I’ll see you soon with this new Saturday Management Serial.
Coming Attraction #2: The True View from the Millennial Perspective:
At last count, there are at least 476,890 articles about managing, coping with and surviving the younger generation in the workforce, all written by people over 40. I own a few of those articles. (Note: I made the number of articles up, however it feels about right.)
It’s time to shift things around a bit and gain some insights from individuals looking at the word from their own early career eyes, and describing what they are seeing and experiencing. I have a suspicion we will all learn something in the process.
I’m working with a young and capable professional who is busy attempting to navigate his way through the world, and who has some thoughts to share on what it’s like to be living what all the 40 plus pundits are writing about. He’ll lead us off on this mid-week series, and I’m anxious to recruit a few additional “columnists” to help us all learn and grow. It seems like a ripe time to start a healthy dialogue across the generations on this important topic.
Coming really soon!
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As always, your ideas and input are welcomed. Thanks for reading and tolerating my experiments in management and leadership writing!
How to Handle a Feedback Attack from Your Boss
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Professional Growth, Surviving Lousy Leaders
In spite of the best efforts of those of us that write and coach on leadership and feedback, there are still too many managers that wouldn’t know how to construct an effective feedback discussion if their leadership lives depended on it.
The tales that particularly bother me are the ones where the hard working employee is on the receiving end of a long laundry list of vague criticisms lacking supporting examples, and with expiration dates of many, many months ago.
These unfortunate feedback discussions are all about ego on the part of the giver and are perceived as a sneak attack by the receiver. The giver walks away feeling like he executed on his management tasks, and the receiver walks away feeling like he was executed. People appropriately describe feeling angry, confused, frustrated and depressed after one or more feedback attacks.
While there’s no doubt this is a tough situation for the receiver, there are a number of strategies that can take the sting out of the attack and potentially help build or repair your relationship with your boss in the process.
Fair warning! There are no guarantees in life or in attempting to rehabilitate a Feedback Attacker from a position of weakeness. Nonetheless, you owe it to yourself, your boss and your career to try.
8 Strategies for Successfully Managing A Feedback Attack
1. Resist the Urge to Counter-Attack-It’s normal for you to feel the range of emotions, including outrage and anger or extreme disappointment during a full-scale feedback attack. Earlier in my career, I would respond to a frontal assault with equal energy, and more than a couple of these discussions dissolved into something that I’m not proud of.
My hard-earned guidance is to recognize the situation for what it is, tell your mind and body to relax, and focus all of your energy on active listening. Your calm demeanor and attentiveness alone are enough to take a bit of wind out of the sails of some Feedback Attackers. And most important of all, you need your wits about you, you need good notes and you need a clear mind to look for the good.
2. Recognize the Situation as a Process, Not an Event-The Feedback Attacker created an event, but you need to manage this as a multi-step process. You’ve already lost the skirmish and now you need to be able to walk away with good intel and all of your body parts, not to mention your job, still intact.
3. Don’t Confuse the Messenger’s Style and Incompetence with the Message-This is my nice way of offering that sometimes there are nuggets of gold buried deep inside the heaping piles of feedback dung surrounding you. It is your job to put on the gloves and dig through the piles for anything of value.
4. Ask Questions, But Be Careful-Good, active listening involves you asking clarifying questions and ultimately, restating the answers in your own words and seeking confirmation. My caution on this one is that most Feedback Attackers are on pretty thin ice with their evidence. They don’t have reasonable answers or specifics for your good and appropriate questions, and if you persist in pushing on the questions, you will leave them no choice but to assert ego and position. It’s easy to perceive and to mistake when a feedback receiver has shifted from the conversation at hand to building evidence for HR. It’s not time to go there yet.
5. Seek First to Understand-Don’t leave the conversation without summarizing and restating the Attacker’s concerns. Forget for a moment that in your mind it is unfounded. You must understand the concerns, no matter how vague.
6. Manage the Go-Forward Process-Most Feedback Attackers not only cannot substantiate their issues, they have no idea how to guide you on improving. It is essential that you seek agreement to come back to your boss with your thoughts on making and monitoring your improvement progress. Indicate your interest in sitting down to discuss progress and to ask questions on a regular basis going forward. And then do it! Along the way, you will show your interest in listening and improving, you will show your respect and you will be actively crafting your next review in real time with mutually developed evidence.
7. Work Harder at Managing Your Boss-The feedback process is often massacred by inexperienced and/or insecure managers that truly don’t know what to do. You can respond with outrage and risk becoming a victim or, you can suck it up and work harder at understanding the issues, challenges and priorities of your boss, and then helping him or her with those priorities. Your active interest and visible support for your boss may eliminate the chances of future feedback attacks. In fact, you might just forge a good working relationship along the way.
And finally:
8. Don’t Fool Yourself By Being a Fool-If the boss is truly a Grade-A jerk and your attempts at building a bridge are met with more dynamite, you are not going to win. You can HOPE (a bad strategy) that he/she will go somewhere else, but you’ve got to face reality. You may need to vote yourself off the island.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Feedback Attackers are petty tyrants and inexperienced leaders seeking to establish authority through control. While fighting back might feel right in the moment, it’s never the right thing to do. Don’t ignore the attack…it is very real and that attitude from your boss is a warning sign. Instead, politely and professionally grab control of the process and genuinely work to improve and to communicate. You might just be helping someone grow up as a leader while you are protecting and enhancing your job.
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