Nine Power Techniques for Building Your Leadership Credibility

April 24, 2009 By 5 Comments

Whether you are a first-time leader, an experienced manager taking over a new team or an informal leader such as a project or product manager, you will be as successful as you are credible.  Your credibility is your professional bedrock.  Build on it carefully and constantly. 

In my book as co-author with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership, I compare credibility to a bank account.  Credibility deposits are hard earned and the balance builds slowly over time as you prove yourself to be an effective, honest leader focused on developing and supporting your team and organization. 

Most leaders (including informal leaders) are unaware of the fact that they are being watched and judged constantly. People naturally look for clues to a leader’s character.  They compare words and actions and if those two don’t match, the verdict is fast and fair: not credible.  They look for signs of hidden agendas, favoritism and gamesmanship.

For even the craftiest of politicians, people are perceptive and will base their commitment and support based on “blink” assessments.

You are on trial every day.  Don’t forget it.

 Nine Power Techniques to Help Build Leadership Credibility:

1.    Serve & Support.  While it sounds like the logo on the side of a police cruiser, the effective leader understands that he/she is working for his/her team and constantly reinforces this philosophy in both words and actions.

2.    Create a Positive Working Environment.  This includes working with team members to set behavioral expectations for performance, accountability, decision-making and resolving problems and then reinforcing those values and behaviors with consistent actions.  

3.    Teach.  The best leaders are aware that their ultimate goal is to help develop others.  They are teachers that use developmental opportunities and feedback as their primary educational tools.   

4.    Insulate & Showcase.  These seemingly conflicting actions are part of the leader’s balancing act.  The leader must learn how to insulate the team members from destructive interference while ensuring that they receive the visibility and support that they require.  In particular, ensuring the right visibility for teams and members is a powerful motivational tool.

5.    Facilitate & Make Decisions.  More conflicting issues.  As a teacher, the leader must learn to facilitate solution development and idea generation.  However, when conditions require, he/she has no qualms about making and communicating decisions.

6.    Communicate at Just the Right Volume.  It’s easy to whiff on this one.  Bombard your team with low-value communiques and you are a distraction.  Offer too little and you’ll be accused of everything including the Lindbergh kidnapping.  The best leaders work with teams and members to define needs and evaluate and improve communications effectiveness.

7.    Anchor Communications in Goals.  Just like a CEO works to constantly integrate strategies and actions in pursuit of creating value for customers, the leader ensures that team and individual goals are front and center and linked to the firm’s goals.  

8.    Dispense Accountability Fairly.  Play favorites or let under-performers slide and not only will you destroy the team environment, you’ll eviscerate your own credibility as a leader.  Remember, everyone is watching.

9.    Live by the Coach’s Credo.  If the team succeeds, it is because of the team.  If it fails, it is because of the coach.  Seriously, effective leaders don’t look for scapegoats.

Without credibility, your effectiveness is nil.  Most people and most leaders are woefully ignorant of their perceived credibility.  Walk in the door everyday with the goal of strengthening yours.  Remember, you are being watched.  Closely.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

From Strategic Planning to Strategic Conversations

April 16, 2009 By 3 Comments

The McKinsey Quarterly (subscription required) just released the results of its latest survey on corporate strategic planning activities in an article entitled: Strategic Planning: Three tips for 2009. 

Key results include:

  • 47% of executives surveyed indicated that their strategic planning practices will be different this year than in prior years.  34% indicated that the activities would be “extremely different.”
  • The differences tend to focus on increased emphasis on scenario planning, conducting a broader range of analyses, and as you might expect, focusing on more of a short time horizon.
  • In what is likely good news for the malady that I described in my recent post, “Too many projects chasing too few resources,” one of the more widely reported changes for this period is an increase in the rigor of evaluating and approving capital projects.
  • As for monitoring execution, 50% of respondents plan on scrutinizing their firm’s/unit’s performance against the plan somewhere between weekly and monthly. 

The survey’s conclusion offers a cautionary tale on the potential for too much short-term focus, with the following:

“Important as these adjustments may be, their nature also raise a major question in the minds of many strategists: is the crisis atmosphere undermining focus on all but the immediate future? More than 50 percent of executives, in fact, express worry about not striking the right balance between near-term challenges and long-term strategic priorities. The perennial challenge of striking this balance has become particularly acute this year.”

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From Planning to Conversations

You can set your watch by the fact that just as opening day in baseball rolls around, the articles on strategic planning start appearing.  I continue to rail at the notion that this is a seasonal activity, and am actually encouraged by the large number of firms that are planning on evaluating performance against plan monthly.  Hopefully, this evaluation is more than a distribution of reports, and involves opportunities to truly gauge progress, capture lessons-learned and make real-time adjustments.

While there is no doubt that strategic planning done right is a valuable management process and tool, in my opinion, we need to change both the vernacular and the approaches to move from strategic planning to conducting strategic conversations.  Frankly, I want everyone in my firm thinking, talking and relating their work activities to the firm’s strategies for creating customer value and thumping competitors. 

There are many potential pitfalls and poor practices that can derail even the best of intentions for strategic planning, and one of the most fatal is restricting the involvement in this process to a select few. 

And while I am neither naïve enough or idealistic enough to think that it is practical to have everyone actively involved in all planning sessions, I do believe that good leadership practices open up multi-directional dialogue about strategy and performance.

The best run companies that I’ve worked around ensure that employees pass the “Walk In the Door” test…they can connect their priorities to the firm’s priorities every day that they walk in the door.  They also ensure that there are ample opportunities for employees to share ideas, capture lessons-learned, reflect on Voice of Customer and suggest adjustments to execution or even to strategy. 

The people in these environments engage in strategic conversations that ensure that the emperor knows if he has no clothes on and that challenge potentially bone-headed ideas or the poor execution practices that derail good ideas. 

Charan and Bossidy call this Robust Dialogue.  I describe it as a healthy feedback culture, filled with leaders at all levels that get the fact that their chances of success are enhanced if they park their egos at the door and promote and encourage widespread involvement.

Realizing a culture where strategic conversations are prevalent and effective takes hard work on the part of those that lead.  Of course, no one said that being a good leader was easy. 

How healthy and frequent are the strategic conversations in your firm?

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Detoxing Your Team

April 7, 2009 By 10 Comments

Most of us can recall working with someone that had such a strong, negative impact on the work environment that you could t literally feel the emotional mood swing when this person walked into a meeting.

For some unknown reason, perhaps a karmic-imbalance in the universe, these toxic characters have the unnerving and disconcerting tendency to be great survivors.  They rule their teams like Tony Soprano and they manage the higher-ups with diplomatic skills that would make a great politician proud.  And they do all of this in broad daylight, while the people that work for and with them roll their eyes and hope not to fall into the toxic character’s line of sight.

While it is easy to intuit that toxic employees are value destroyers, we’ve been short on hard data about the true impact that these individuals have on the work environment.  Until now.

The April 2009 Harvard Business Review summarizes a study by Christine Porath  and Christina Pearson that offers insights into “How Toxic Colleagues Corrode Performance.”  Porath and Pearson polled several thousand managers and employees from a variety of U.S. companies about the impact of toxic people at work, and the results affirm what we’ve long suspected.  These people extract a costly toll on the rest of the employees and on overall performance.

Selected highlights when faced with toxic or rude co-workers:

  • 48% decreased their work effort
  • 47% decreased their time at work
  • 66% said their performance declined
  • 78% said their commitment to the organization declined.

And so on.

Art’s Observations:

The best advice that I ever learned the hard way took was “fire the politicians.”  In one case earlier in my career, I was the enabler for this toxic individual, preferring to see only his strengths and talents and ignoring the havoc he created in the working environment.

Ultimately, I learned to fire toxic characters fast.  The individuals that did not share and exhibit the values that we espoused or that ruled through intimidation were the first ones out the door, regardless of their capabilities. 

I’ve never regretted firing a toxic employee.

Fair warning.  Toxic employees don’t make it easy for you to fire them.  The best of the worst actually frighten their bosses into inaction, not through overt intimidation or threats, but through more subtle approaches.  Remember, these are skillful politicians with the hearts and minds of gangsters, and they’ve convinced a lot of people about how valuable they are to the organization.  A conscientious manager may find herself swimming against the tide of popular opinion from her peers or higher ups on this issue.

Brace yourself for a fight, don’t be intimidated and stick to your guns.  It’s easier to back down and the toxic employee is betting on this outcome.  Like most thugs and bullies, they don’t expect people to stand-up to them and fight back. 

I’m certain that I read “fire the politicians” somewhere, and I wish that I could provide attribution.  Regardless, it’s good advice, especially in these tough times when teams are shrinking and those left behind must be capable of performing at a high level. 

If you’re on the edge about who should go, you will be well served to get the toxicity out.

 

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“It’s Simple” and The Six C’s that Enable High Performance

March 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Earlier in my career at one of the world’s great companies, Panasonic, I worked for a gentleman that taught me a valuable lesson about business and about leading that I carry with me to this day.

We had embarked on some ambitious new product development and growth plans and were struggling with a fair number of uncharacteristic but vexing software quality problems.  I would from time to time sit down with the group manager, a man that I’ll call Sam, and I would painstakingly describe the problems I was seeing in advancing our business.

Sam was a good listener and he would nod his head, stare out the window deep in thought and when I was finished, he would sit back in his chair and close his eyes…in obvious contemplation of the very challenges that I had just outlined (or so I thought).

After a few minutes of silence…and I was sure the silence was needed to let his great brain process on the issues, he would leap out his chair, smile at me and say, “But Art-san, the solution is simple.”  And with that, he would walk away, usually at a brisk pace.

I only had to experience this situation twice in order to appreciate the two deep lessons that I had learned from these encounters. 

First, I learned that it was a complete waste of time to bounce these problems off of Sam!

And second, I realized that he was right. We tend to take complicated situations and look for complicated solutions when most of the answers are pretty clear.  They may not be easy to implement, but they are usually clear.  Indirectly, Sam had given me a valuable lesson in Management by Occam’s Razor!

The 6 C’s: Your Leadership and Performance Power Tools

The same lesson goes for leading.  While there are no silver bullets for becoming an effective leader, there are in my opinion Six Power Tools that a leader can use to improve his or her effectiveness and drive performance excellence. 

1. Context: people do their best work when they can link their efforts and contributions to a bigger cause.  Ensure that your team understands your firm’s core strategies; leverage the power of a clear vision to provide high-level context and constantly involve everyone in providing input back into strategy.  And don’t forget to feed people’s hunger for results and progress updates. 

2. Connection: related to context, study after study shows the important human need to be connected and to feel valued and appreciated.  As a leader, pay attention to your people; empathize with their issues and give them the respect of asking for their input and listening to their concerns. You will promote strong performance if you establish a personal connection with your team members.

3. Credibility: people and teams do their best work for leaders that they respect.  My own research indicates that many leaders shoot themselves in one or both feet by not backing words with actions, by not treating people with respect and by not paying attention.  Treat every encounter as an opportunity for you to strengthen your credibility. 

4. Conditions: your principal job is to create the environment for your people to succeed.  It’s as simple as surrounding yourself with great individuals and then working unceasingly to do everything possible to ensure their success.  Focus on creating a high performance environment where values are clear, feedback is constant, goals are meaningful and accountability is the de facto expectation for and from every member.

5. Customer Connection: it doesn’t matter whether our customer is internal or external, we do our best work when we are armed with a clear understanding of how our efforts will enable our customers to succeed.

6. Communication:  master the art of feedback—this is your most powerful communication and performance tool.  Maintain a Questions to Comments ratio that helps you understand at a deep level, and when it is time for you to be understood, provide context and link your communications to vision, strategy and customer. 

As another career mentor once indicated to me in a slightly awkward but nonetheless meaningful phrase, “You will be as successful as you are able to communicate.”

The Bottom-Line:

So, you are concerned about high performance and improving as a leader.

It’s simple.  

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Management Innovation, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the Week of March 16, 2009

March 15, 2009 By 1 Comment

I’m heading to Austin, Texas for the first few days this week, so in celebration of the forecasted 80 degree+ weather, I’ll be sipping on something cold and caffeinated by the time you read this post.

First, some weekly reminders;

  • Remember, you set the tone for your entire team.  Show up with a smile on your face.  Ask people how their weekends were and muscle your calendar a bit to get in some more one on one time with your colleagues and teams.
  • Focus your energy on finding and knocking down some barriers for your project teams.  If you are a project sponsor, meet with the project manager, ask for an update and ask how you can help.  Then do it!
  • Make certain your team members are up to speed on the big issues.  Share performance updates and review key priorities.  Challenge your team members to evaluate their own priorities in the context of the organization and identify prospective activities or projets that don’t fit.  Then kill the projects that don’t fit.
  • Be on the lookout for positive and constructive feedback opportunities and engage.  Be specific and reinforce or focus on observable behaviors.  Remember to link the feedback to the business.
  • Hey, it’s March already.  It’s probably time to schedule your next professional development planning session with each individual team member. 

 The Bigger Picture: Are You Leveraging Your Firm’s Values as a Leadership Tool?

Many leaders and many firms miss the value of their values.  Those noble thoughts outlined and framed on the conference room wall or embedded in Lucite on your desk, are actually worth much more than the paper or plastic they are printed on. 

The theory is that the established values of the firm define standards of behavior and expectations for the day-to-day actions and decisions of employees.  Mostly, they just sit there and look nice on the wall.

If you’ve ever had the occasion to work for or with a firm that takes values seriously, you know that these are powerful tools to lead by. (For a detailed post on this topic, see: Values-Based Leadership: More of What I Learned at Matsushita.)

  • Use the values to explain the culture and expectations for citizenship and performance to prospective recruits and new hires.
  • Leverage the values as a filter for decision-making on tough people issues.  Jack Welch’s maxim was that you could be an A (top) player but if you didn’t fit the values of the corporation, there was no place at GE for you.  It’s amazing how relevant the values become if your colleagues see you making the tough consistent calls in line with those values.
  • If your firm doesn’t have a strong values-culture and values statements, create your own for your team.  I did this through a “Charter” document that outlined the expectations for performance and involvement by all team members, and it served the same purpose as a statement of corporate values would have, only it was function specific (although holistic about engaging and working with other members of the organization).  Hey, it filled a gap and was better than waiting for values statements to magically appear.

The Bottom-Line for the Week:

Engage, ask questions, find ways to help and then spend a few minutes thinking about how to apply your firm’s values to improving your leadership performance.  People value your time and your attention, and they thrive on pursuing meaningful challenges in environments where the rules are clear and agreeable.  Oh, and try and have some fun while you are at it.  Life is short and the joy is in the journey.  

-Art

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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