Leadership Lessons from the Road

February 27, 2009 By 2 Comments

One of the great things about leading workshops with talented professionals is how much I learn about the very real challenges that people face in trying to get work done inside their organizations.  

I had the great privilege of facilitating a workshop called Leader Mastery for Technical Professionals at The Data Warehouse Institute’s World Conference in Las Vegas this past week.  Kudos to the team at TDWI for producing an outstanding educational conference and for their usual flawless arrangements.

A special thanks to the group of great professionals that had the courage at a technically focused conference to attend a day-long session on a topic that would have many heading in the opposite direction. This group was engaged, hungry for knowledge to improve their performance and excited about sharing ideas, challenges and best practices with each other.  The pleasure was all mine!

After spending a day together helping this group develop a better context for what it means to lead and the principles and practices that will support their development as effective leaders, a number of themes about their challenges emerged from the discussions. These include: 

  • Gaining more context for their firm’s strategies as a means of better linking team goals and priorities to the organization’s priorities. 
  • Dealing with the very real challenges of building high performance teams across cultures, geographies and time-zones.  
  • Leading teams that increasingly include external contractors that don’t necessarily have the same level of commitment and share the same level of accountability.
  • Improving mastery of soft skills that promote performance including: coaching and feedback, talent development and decision-making. 
  • Gaining better support from HR to facilitate talent development and team strengthening versus the still all-too-common policing that seems to emanate from this functional area.
  • Breaking the vicious cycle of promoting the best technical contributors into a nightmare as they try and build bench strength.
  • Finding ways to work effectively and collaboratively in matrix environments.

My message in these sessions is always that effective leadership and effective leadership development practices serve as the foundation of organizational performance excellence.  What I hear consistently as I run these programs as well as when I engage with MBA students is an intense desire on the part of the individuals to contribute at a higher level.

I also hear significant frustration at the ridiculous cultural, managerial and procedural impediments that they face when trying to innovate and drive change.  These people want to create and belong to high performance teams and organizations.  Most confess that all too often, this is not the case. 

My bottom-line for this quick post from the road is for senior leadership to focus on breaking down barriers that inhibit performance and seek ways to set your talent free.  

Now more than ever, you and your organization require all hands to be contributing, innovating and seeking ways to create value.  It’s time to get out of your executive meetings, clear your agendas, start asking questions, listen carefully and then do something.  You are wasting remarkable opportunities to improve, and that’s not a winning approach in this market.

Filed Under: Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Leader’s Mid-Week Survival Guide

February 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment

It’s Wednesday.  How are you doing on your leadership priorities this week?

If you are starting to feel the week slip away from you, here’s a blunt reminder and a few tips to focus on your true priorities.  The week’s not over yet…and victory is still within your reach. It’s time to fight off the fires and push away from the urgent-unimportant.

Are you make one on one time for your associates?

Adjust the calendar to fit in some one on one and team coaching time.   If there is no give in the middle, look to the beginning and end.  Meet your team member for coffee (you buy) or order in lunch (you still buy) and provide the focused coaching and feedback that people need to perform at a high level.

Are you making the decisions that free your colleagues to move forward?

Every decision you don’t make or that you forestall has a ripple effect throughout your team.  Try pushing decision-making downstream, or face up  to the fact that for some issues, the buck stops with you.  Make the call.

Is your concern over risk affecting the speed of your decision-making?

Check out the timeless advice that I received from a seminar participant in Decision-Making and the Three Rules of Risk Management.

Is fear crippling your team and keeping people from focusing on creating value and solving problems?

This is a common problem in this economy.  As Herbert said, “Fear is the Mind Killer.”  Spend 7 minutes and listen to my podcast on Dealing with Fear in the Workplace, and then put the suggestions into play.

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Here’s the blunt part.  GET MOVING!

Oh, and have a great and productive rest of the week.  -Art

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Decision-Making, Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine for the New Week: 5 Quick Tips to Jolt You Into Action

January 25, 2009 By 4 Comments

Whether you are Chief Executive, a functional manager or someone who leads informally on project and product teams, start your week right and put these suggestions to work.

1.  Say “Hello.”

If you work in a physical office, start your day by walking around and saying hello and asking about the weekend.  Smile, make good eye contact and show that you are interested.

There are a lot of stupid reasons why we stay away from people’s personal lives.  Get over it.   I’m not suggesting you probe, pry or do anything that makes anyone the least bit uncomfortable.  Instead, pay attention to what people volunteer to you and follow up. If you know that someone has a sick child, a major event or is involved in something important in the community, ask a question about it.  And quit steering the conversation back to something about you.

2.  Audit your schedule and revise it to include some or more people-time.

Look at your week’s schedule.  If you are a leader responsible for others, you should have a healthy chunk of your time invested in meetings that provide an opportunity for you to coach, gauge progress, provide feedback and provide encouragement.  If most of your time is consumed with status meetings, you need to make a conscious effort to reorient your schedule.  Set up following weeks with a better balance of people time and coaching meetings.

3.  Recognize the Opportunities for Drive-By Coaching in Your Day.

Hallway conversations, quick phone calls or even e-mails can and should incorporate elements of coaching.  They are not substitutes for quality time, but tools to use as everyone plows through their work.  A quick phone call to follow-up on an issue is a great opportunity to offer encouragement, ask a few questions and set up a formal meeting.

4.  Resolve this week to help solve problems and knock down barriers at every opportunity.

It’s amazing how enjoyable work is when your driving motivation is to help. Instead of planning to read the riot act or take some names at the project from hell status meeting, focus on helping the group identify and frame problems and begin developing solutions.  Resist the urge to provide answers or you will miss the teaching opportunity.

5.  Calibrate on Your Manager’s Goals

Regardless of whether your manager practices any of this good leadership stuff, strive to coach in reverse.  Recognize that the boss has a whole host of problems and pressures, many of which she does not share with you.  Ask questions and volunteer your help.  You’ll both be glad that you did.

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A week is a horrible thing to waste.  Put one or more of these tips into play.  Rinse and repeat in the future.  Again you’ll be glad that you did.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Where Do I Go From Here?

January 16, 2009 By 1 Comment

DreamcatcherNot surprisingly in this economy, a great number of people are busy plotting their next career and life steps.

Whether prompted by a layoff, a threat of a layoff or the recognition that conditions can all too easily result in a layoff; I’m listening to many people who are dancing with the idea of a shift in direction.  Some have already pulled the trigger.

My armchair psychologist opinion is that negative circumstances force people to think about how they are spending their time and what it is doing for them both financially and psychically.  This happens as people mature or as they experience some of life’s challenging moments, like the illness and passing of a loved one or close friend.

As people mature, it seems like the need for psychic rewards increases.  Perhaps it is natural that we move from the push for success to the drive for significance.

This shift in direction is much more than a new job.  I’m talking about a radical reinvention in a different field.  A few significant changes that I’ve witnessed include:

  • Housewife and volunteer extraordinaire to college student and then middle-school teacher.
  • Executive to Not for Profit Executive Director
  • Mid-career IT Specialist to Grad School and next to Law School
  • Mid-level manager to Restaurant Owner
  • Executive to Personal Coach
  • Executive Director of a Not for Profit to Retail Specialty Shop Owner
  • Corporate Attorney to Software Entrepreneur
  • Venture Capital Executive to Owner of Small Manufacturer

Perhaps the most significant change that I’ve encountered was a dear friend and college roommate who was sitting at his swimming pool in his Chicago-area North Shore mansion as a wildly successful Doctor and came to the realization that he finally had achieved everything he had ever hoped for.  A successful practice, expensive cars, a great home, and a wife.

He quit the next day. He truly hated what he was doing and who/what he had become.  His wife left him immediately and he started down the path of a decade long journey that took him to the far corners of the world, including a stint as a Shaman.

He’s a happy, successful man today with no regrets on the life change.

While his example is the most radical change that I’ve encountered, his story is powerful.  What courage it took to walk away from it all.

There are many more people that are in the early thinking phase of “Hmmm, maybe  I should dust off that old life’s goal and… .”

Some individuals will describe what they would like to do and just as quickly you will hear them talk themselves out of it.  “I’ve always thought of…, but the kids are in college and… .”

Ideas to Get Going:

Similar to the theme in my post the other day on Beating the Economic Blues, it is critical to do something…to take some form of action when change is on your mind.

While I don’t advocate giving up your practice tomorrow, there are many actions that you can take that can help you process on whether a significant change might work.  In particular, you can investigate whether your vision of your dream job and reality are even closely connected.

Fair warning, we often romanticize things in our mind.  The best advice I ever saw for someone considering buying a fast food restaurant was to find a location out of town and go to work there for a few weeks.  The person that offered this advice had done just that and he hated every second of the work.  His primary research saved him from making a catastrophic financial and career mistake.

  • Find people who are doing what you want to do and reach out and ask questions.  Tap into your alumni association or other groups that you belong to for contacts.
  • If you find yourself “talking yourself out of” pursuing a dream, cut it out and investigate what it might mean to start moving down that path.
  • Once you’ve done your homework, including serious soul-searching with your significant other to gauge his/her willingness to work through this phase with you, make a plan.
  • Work the plan.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and you don’t have to follow my college roommate’s approach and quit tomorrow.  Although his approach did guarantee change!

The Bottom Line for Now

What do you want to be when you grow up?  What did you want to be?  How important is it for you to achieve better balance on the success/significance scale?

There are few good reasons short of survival to give up your dreams.  While they may seem distant, this is often an illusion.  The first steps of researching, investigating and experimenting are critical to making a future big step less daunting.  Quit thinking, quit talking and start doing.

Where do you want to go from here?

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Development: “This is Squishy Feely” Stuff

October 8, 2008 By 2 Comments

The “Squishy Feely” statement was on a recent comment card for a workshop that I conducted.  The follow on note to that very technical phrase was, “We’re not going to do this.”

The “stuff” and the “this” that this individual was referencing included things like:

  • Providing growth opportunities for the firm’s associates by structuring assignments for developmental purposes.
  • Working to identify the firm’s high potential talent and ensure that these individuals are gaining the experience and exposure that they need to develop into leaders in the near future.
  • Increasing mentoring, coaching and improving feedback practices.  A survey of the firm’s associates indicated that this is generally absent from the environment.
  • Involving people outside of the senior staff in providing input for strategy assessment and formulation.  It is presently a closed-door process.
  • Taking time as a senior team to identify the attributes of future leaders and to begin forming a practical leadership competency model.

And a few other “Squishy Feely” things like the above.

It’s not uncommon to run into resistance from the senior members of an organization that has just recognized that it might be good to professionalize and improve talent development and acquisition processes. I can even understand the “Squishy Feely” comment coming from a grizzled functional veteran that grew up in a world where the topic of talent identification, development and retention was not as front and center as it increasingly is today.  However the statement: “We’re not going to do this,” is impossible to fathom. It’s a lot like saying, “It’s good to be ignorant.”  Or, “It’s OK not to breathe.”

Without launching into a diatribe on the need for organizations to become great at identifying, developing and retaining talent (I’ve co-authored a book and composed about 130 blog posts on this topic), I will instead encourage the professional dealing with the subject of leadership development to recognize the reality of the resistance that they face.    Ignorance and apathy are powerful adversaries and their cousin, fear of change, is perhaps even stronger.

If you are leading or involved in driving the topic of leadership/talent development in your organization or with your team, it pays to understand what you are up against and to steel yourself for the resistance.  If you are doing this at the senior level, expect a marathon, not a sprint and take heart in the small, incremental victories.

My post of a few months ago, Teaching a Senior Leadership Team to Dance with Leadership Development, includes what I believe are some useful tips for anyone involved with this issue at the top levels.  In it, I propose 8 Steps to Mastering the Leadership Development Dance, and frankly, upon further review and after considering the “Squishy Feely” comment, I stand behind the steps.  I am hopeful that they also have something for the mid-level manager seeking to strengthen practices at his or her level as well.)

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I can’t imagine not doing everything possible to arm myself and my company with the best possible talent at every level of the organization.  The day that the “We’re not going to do this” types retire or are otherwise invited to do something else is a victory for the rest of the organization.  Some will see the light…others will go on happy in their ignorance and narrowly focused on their minute to minute mission.  If you are about creating the future, don’t let the resisters slow you down.

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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