The Conversations You Are Not Having Are Killing Your Business
I work a great deal helping people and teams improve their conversations. Whether the focus is on framing, feedback or process, most teams and most individuals are able to relate to and adopt new tools and approaches that help immediately. However, the most important issue that most leaders and teams face is not in what is being said, but rather, it’s the important topics not being discussed.
10 Popular Discussions Not Occurring in Your Organization Right Now:
1. The much overdue “crucial confrontation” with the toxic team member.
2. The brutally honest assessment of your firm’s situation in the marketplace.
3. The fact that you have no visible sort of strategy…you’ve never had one and now that times have turned tough, the absence of this strategy is visible to everyone but the boss.
4. The reality that last year’s pet development project from the CEO is sucking the resources and morale out of the company, when everyone but the CEO knows this project just sucks.
5. How your “goals” and “metrics” connect to what’s important for the firm. Heck, you would settle for goals.
6. What you really think about an employee’s performance. The coating of sugar “sandwiched” between the bread of your watered down feedback is choking off the real message.
7. The painful reality that the last 243 “brainstorming” sessions you’ve participated in, have resulted in just one outcome…hiring the hypnotist for company holiday party. It was darned funny, but you find yourself wishing you could be hypnotized to forget the painful reality that there’s little that ever changes in this slowly eroding business.
8. Why the boss spends her entire life flying around “meeting with customers” but nothing ever seems to come of it, other than the postponement of the already much postponed critical discussions.
9. How the latest reorganization plan, engineered from the top, actually improves anything for anyone who works with people who send money to your firm.
10. Anything resembling a development discussion where you have a chance to share your ambitions and aspirations and the boss actually does something to help you move in that direction. The only direction you feel like moving now, is out.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Chances are that the silence from at least a few of these conversations not happening in your firm is deafening. Feel free to print this out, highlight the “missing” conversation and pass it along to the silent parties. Or, better yet…pick one and start the conversation rolling.
Words, carefully constructed and artfully executed are still the best way to start a revolution.
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About Art Petty:
Art Petty is a Leadership & Career Coach helping motivated professionals of all levels achieve their potential. In addition to working with highly motivated professionals, Art frequently works with project teams in pursuit of high performance. Art’s second book, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development, will be announced during the last week of September, 2011. Initial copies are now available on Amazon.com and via the author for team/group orders.
Contact Art via e-mail to discuss a coaching, workshop or speaking engagement.
Leadership Caffeine: Do You See Beauty or Blemishes?
Filed under: Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth
If you’ve ever worked for or around someone who is an expert critic…one of those individuals who can look at a masterpiece and spot a flaw, you know how demoralizing the experience can be. They look at beautiful pictures or great outcomes and focus on describing the flaws.
If you are one of these “Negative Motivators,” this one’s for you!
No Gold Stars Here:
A client struggled with a boss who believed that motivation and inspiration were outcomes of criticism. He wasted no time at every opportunity identifying what he perceived as flaws in the projects, programs, and presentations of his co-workers. When a frustrated and bold employee finally screwed up the courage to ask why he never offered positive support, his answer was immediate; “That’s not my job. I’m supposed to make you perform better, not cheerlead. You want a gold star, go back to kindergarten.”
Uh…OK. Thanks for the inspiration, I guess.
Look, I’m all for constructive criticism supported by coaching. That’s what we’re supposed to do. However, motivating by providing a never-ending string of criticisms is only going to demoralize people and teams and suck the life and creativity out of your organization.
Beware When You Start Believing Your Own Attempts at Rationalizing Your Behavior:
Every once in awhile, I run into a “Negative Motivator ” who has a well-developed and almost believable rationale for their approach. A few of the comments I’ve heard over time:
We’re all adults, and we don’t need daily pats on the back.
No one achieves greatness because someone was there telling them how great they were every step of the way.
How do people know how to improve if I don’t tell them?
It’s my job to ensure that people meet my high standards.
People want to please the boss. I use it as a carrot that’s out there in front of everyone. So far, no one has caught up to it.
In isolation, there’s just a bit of truth in every statement (OK, the bit might be really small in a few of those!), but what’s missing is an understanding of the human cost (energy, inspiration, environment) from a never ending slow-drip of negativity. A more balanced approach that acknowledges beauty where appropriate and offers encouragement and criticism will in my experience, produce far greater results.
5 Ideas for Achieving Better Balance in Your Feedback:
1. Know thyself. Many of the Nattering Nabobs of Negativity (thanks, Spiro Agnew) aren’t as semi self-aware as those who commented above. In case you dont’ know which side of the ledger you come down on…positive or negative, run a little experiment for a few days and keep a tally of how many criticisms you offer versus how many times you offer praise during a day. If the balance is consistently skewed towards the negative, you have work to do.
2. Know thyself, part 2. Give your employees a chance to share their thoughts on your feedback skills and habits. While the results of an anonymous survey can be skewed when groups fear the boss, if you are genuine in your pursuit of feedback on your own performance, you will likely gain some frank and useful input.
3. Advance your philosophy in pursuit of better performance (yours and theirs). You’re not completely wrong in your thoughts on constructive criticism. However, great coaches and great managers encourage the development of strengths and carefully help people navigate the weaknesses. They don’t bludgeon them into high performance with all that’s wrong with their work. There’s a needed balance of positive support and constructive criticism.
4. Don’t change your style suddenly and starting handing out gratuitous praise…support it with clear examples. You know when people are doing good work. Find time on occasion to acknowledge the work and share very clear and specific reasons about what’s good with the work. Your clearly defined positive feedback reinforces what people did right. Your goal is to get them to do that consistently.
5. Beware feedback sandwiches of all types. Sandwiching your feedback is a bad habit where managers who are uncomfortable offering constructive input surround the negative issue with big pieces of positive praise. (For more on this odious technique, see my post: Why I Hate the Sandwich Technique for Delivering Feedback.) In the case of our Negative Motivator here, beware Reverse Sandwiching…hiding the praise between two big pieces of your moldy negative comments. The praise will be overwhelmed by the negatives surrounding it.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
You can offer positive praise without being perceived as weak. Some “Negative Motivators” are concerned about losing their “tough” image, and they wrongly associate praise with weakness. I’ve worked for and around tough managers…those with high expectations and standards, who understood that positive praise was an important part of the success formula. While their minds might be drawn to the problems and the negatives they see in every image, they are emotionally intelligent enough to recognize that others both need and deserve positive support for their good work as well.
You don’t need to stock up on gold stars, but for top performance, you do need to learn to talk about and reward the positives on occasion. Just for today, start looking at the beauty in work and try and not preoccupy on the blemishes. You might be surprised how people respond.
Leadership Caffeine: Time to Take out the 360-Degree Trash
Filed under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance
Note from Art: this rave was prompted by one too many discussions with good people about the frustration they feel over their firm’s evaluation systems and the lack of good quality developmental feedback.
While I’m certain there’s a good 360-degree feedback program out there somewhere, the trash frequently heaped upon unwitting corporate victims by misguided management groups via their HR departments is….well, it’s trash. Please place it in a proper container and dispose of it before it starts to stink.
Vague input filled with gross generalizations provided by untrained (in delivering evaluations and providing feedback) and potentially politically motivated individuals is truly not worth the paper it’s printed on. In fact, these systems are often de-motivating, potentially destructive and often nothing more than a compliance game that distorts behaviors and keeps people from having the right discussions for fear of reprisal.
Talent development is a critical responsibility and the delivery of high quality, timely, behavioral, specific and business-oriented input is priceless. Priceless and all-too rare.
What’s a Manager to Do? 4 Ideas:
If you’re stuck with one of these turkeys…the kind that asks others to assess their opinion on the value of your role with questions such as: “Is this a valuable position?” I empathize with you. Perhaps the spirit of revolution sweeping parts of the world will translate to disgust at poor evaluation and feedback systems and cause managers and employees to rise up. Just in case that doesn’t happen, here are some suggestions:
1. Redouble your efforts. The existence of a 360-degree system does not allow you to abrogate your responsibility for constant evaluation and timely behavioral and business focused feedback. In fact, the system creates so much FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the workplace, that your work here is essential for salvaging the working environment. Seek developmental support, training, coaching/mentoring and study and practice delivering feedback until you develop both competence and comfort.
2. Encourage improvement in the system, but don’t expect much. Push to encourage organizational investment in teaching and training on how to offer input with some redeeming actionable value. Short of the overthrow of the 360-degree system, you’ve got an obligation within your organization to encourage improvements that might move the value meter for the process in the proper direction.
3. Build an effective feedback culture on your team. Encourage and reinforce the obligation people have to engage in constructive, open discussion about group and individual performance. I observe teams all of the time that don’t do this, and the results are always sub-par.
People need to trust you and their team members before they talk openly about key issues, and you own the responsibility for creating an environment of trust. It’s hard work, and requires you to “do as you say” in all matters, including soliciting, accepting and acting upon feedback on your performance from your team members.
4. Champion great people. Regardless of evaluation systems, top leaders are almost always interested in finding people who can do more. It’s OK to advocate for those with potential, and your advocacy can help to stand out in spite of the fog of the evaluation system.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Don’t fall into the trap of letting internal systems and programs do your work as a developer of talent. I’ve witnessed good 360-Systems in cases where reviewers were vetted and selected based on evaluation of their ability to provide quality input…and then were active in a professionally administered program. Unfortunately, most people and most firms don’t take the time to move these programs beyond a compliance tool to this level.
You own the responsibility to deal with the good and bad of performance on your team, and no sheet of paper will substitute for your deliberate and relentless work observing, evaluating, and engaging with others to reinforce the good and help stomp out the bad. And remember, this isn’t a game. It’s serious business with the goal of developing great people to grow your business.
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.
Leadership Caffeine: If You’re Walking on Eggshells, Something is Wrong
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth
Overheard from Various Managers:
“I have to walk on eggshells around her.”
“He’s volatile, and I don’t want to upset him, so I steer clear and let him do his thing.”
“I’m afraid to confront her.”
“He’s too valuable to the firm, so we all kind of look the other way.”
How Much Energy are You Expending Trying to Walk on Eggshells?
While it’s doubtful that many of us have ever literally attempted to walk on eggshells, the phrase is idiomatic for those situations where we are fearful of confronting or even engaging with someone lest we draw their attention or raise their ire. I reference these individuals as Attitude Bullies.
As an early career leader, I recall one individual who masterfully exuded disdain and annoyance every time I approached him. Whether it was real or just an act to keep the boss away, it worked until I recognized that I could not do my job while ignoring this character.
I’ve observed as other individuals have allowed toxic employees to manipulate team and office dynamics by creating an “aura of fear” to keep people in check.
And in what may be the most commonplace of all situations, many leaders excuse the behavior of these characters by rationalizing the situation. “He’s the best at (insert activity), and we can’t afford to lose him.”
If you can relate to any of the situations above, or, if you have your own special Attitude Bully that you find yourself “walking on eggshells” for, it’s time solve this problem.
(Note: my focus here is on situations where your primary fear is, “fear of reaction.” If you sense fear of physical reprisal, stop reading and engage your manager and HR department immediately.)
Six Ideas for Clearing Away the Eggshells and Coping with Attitude Bullies:
1. Engage. Your instinct is to avoid and ignore. Do the opposite. You need to cultivate a formal boss to employee relationship with the individual in question. Without engaging fairly and professionally with the Attitude Bully in question, you have no behavioral basis for feedback, coaching or ultimately, some form of discipline, including termination.
2. Clarify Accountability. The Attitude Bully understands that his/her approach results in different standards for accountability compared to the broader population. You need to eliminate any opportunity for a double standard by clarifying the individual’s responsibility for results. And while some feedback purists may disagree, the results include actual outcomes as well as process and engagement quality. One manager used post-project performance evaluations from team members and the project manager to facilitate discussions on interpersonal approach, attitude and other behaviors. Regardless of approach, the Attitude Bully must understand what they are accountable for in terms of results and workplace behaviors.
3. Observe Often, Reinforce Positives and Tackle Negatives. Neither the Attitude Bully or anyone around you will take you seriously until you hold this person accountable for their results and for their behavior. The best way to manage this situation is to observe the individual’s work with others as much as possible. If the individual is a true individual contributor without much team involvement, it’s all on your shoulders to engage often enough to offer quality, behavioral feedback. Tackle performance issues immediately and provide positive feedback as long as it is merited.
4. Warning! Don’t Apologize or Attempt to Praise Your Way Forward. It takes time for some managers to overcome their fear of Attitude Bullies, and those initial steps to engage are awkward and even frightening for some. Beware the tendency to engage by apologizing for your intrusion, and resist the urge to offer positive praise for behaviors that simply meet the standards that everyone else is accountable for. You only weaken your case with the Attitude Bully when he observes your visible discomfort via false praise or excessive apologizing.
5. Build on Progress. More than a few Attitude Bullies have responded to appropriate attention from the boss by becoming productive members of the workplace environment. While I’m practicing without a license on this one, I suspect that some behaviors are cries for attention and for respect. Your willingness to pay attention to someone is a powerful motivator. As you observe positive progress, offer appropriate feedback and importantly, test the relationship by extending your trust on workplace responsibilities. Assuming that your trust is rewarded with results, keep it going.
6. Cut Your Losses. There’s a managerial due diligence process (different than a formal HR process) when it comes to dealing with Attitude Bullies. Your intent going into the “adjustment” process should not be to fire, but to help. Follow the guidelines above, provide clear feedback, document your interactions, and look for progress.
At the end of the day, if you are doing your job as a manager, your involvement will neutralize and even help the individual reform, or, you will have the basis for moving down the path of purging this workplace toxin. Ultimately, your issue is not about attitude, but rather about dealing with performance issues. You’ve got to engage to manage.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Too many managers spend too much time walking on eggshells. They either avoid the Attitude Bullies or, they deal with them in a manner that reinforces aberrant behaviors. You’re much better suited to sweep the eggshells out of the way and engage to either build a better relationship or establish the basis for ending the relationship. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help from a mentor. Your only mistake here is to continue to try and defy physics and walk across the eggshells. You’ll crush something along the way, and it may be your future prospects in your firm.
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