A Fresh Voice on a Popular Topic: “Things I Wish I Knew When I Became a Leader”
Note from Art: My recent post, “Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me When I Became a Leader,” seemed to strike a familiar chord for many. I’m thrilled that it struck a chord for someone that I’ve invited to guest post for quite awhile and until now, couldn’t quite convince to put pen to paper. A good colleague and friend, Joe Zurawski, joins us today with his thoughts on early leadership missteps and lessons learned the hard way.
I’ve known Joe for a dozen years over several organizations now, and he’s come a million miles from the first-time leader described in this post. Joe is a first-rate leader and mentor as well as an outstanding technology and business strategist with a great marketing mind. He’s the complete package. I’m hoping we can pry some more outstanding content out of Joe now that he’s come clean and shared his early leadership missteps and lessons learned. Joe’s contact and bio info are at the end of the post.
What I wish I would have known when I took my first leadership position-Joe Zurawski
“STOP ACTING LIKE A CONSULTANT AND START LEADING!”
That’s what “Bob” shouted at me at an after work social function after a few beverages. I was stunned; I thought I had been doing a great job being a leader for our newly formed business unit. What was he talking about? Uh, I think there is something somebody should have told me about how to lead when I took this position….
The instance above was shortly after I met Art and we had many conversations on what I needed to do to grow into my leadership position (Art was in a different group at time and became my leadership mentor).
Here’s the situation: After earning my MBA, I joined a large management consulting firm during the heyday of process reengineering in the mid-90’s. The one skill everyone learned was team/group facilitation.
I became very experienced at leading a group through a change process: you served things up in a certain order, let the group digest the concepts and help them see the changes they need to make. The idea was they would take more ownership of the solution because they were the ones that eventually came up with it. Hey, there’s nothing to managing and leading!
After leaving consulting and joining an electronics hardware manufacturing company, a new President formed business units for the first time and I was offered the leadership position for the OEM unit. I was the acting general manager and responsible for leading this team, with direct responsibility for marketing and product management, and indirect responsibility for engineering, finance, quality, and manufacturing.
As a team, we needed to form a strategy, set-up our P&L’s, and create an operating cadence with quarterly reports to the President and senior staff. “Should be just like running an engagement”, I thought, “just lay it out there and they’ll run with it.”
And that’s exactly where the problems started: I acted like a facilitator. My “leadership” style was to ask a lot of questions of the group and assume they would develop the answers. Except they didn’t.
The team had no idea what I was doing or attempting to do. We didn’t make progress and our team meetings were starting to get contentious. Uh, this never happened before and I don’t know what to do!
Bob’s “start leading” comment, and his follow on “tell us where we need to go and what we need to do” really hit home. After sharing the experience with Art and with the company President, they helped me come around to what leadership really means.
Here are the things I wish I would have known in that first leadership role:
- Leadership means leading. It seems obvious, but it wasn’t at the time. The team wanted someone to tell them where we needed to go and how we were going to get there, not someone to serve up abstract questions to provoke “deep thoughts”. Set a clear path, layout clear tasks, and constantly tie it to the end goal.
- Don’t expect that everyone on your team speaks your language. I was using words and talking about things in a context completely foreign to what they had previously experienced. I was talking “consultant speak.” I had to learn to bridge the gap and approach things from their perspective.
- You are not “one of the guys” any more. I wanted to be liked and didn’t want to come in and be some outside tough guy that doesn’t listen. I wanted us to be a harmonious team that had fun together. The reality is I was now “management” and was treated as such. You don’t have to be mean or evil to lead, but don’t expect to have several new best friends either.
- It’s OK to seek help when things go awry. While I have as much pride as anyone, I knew things were going poorly and I really didn’t see where to go. Having a supportive, but not intrusive, President, and an outside-the-company mentor like Art, were both very helpful to vent, gain perspective on what the team was seeing in me, and what I needed to do differently.
The final point:
Learning to lead with no up-front guidance was difficult for me. While we eventually came around and had solid results, it was a longer and more difficult path than was necessary.
If you are headed for a leadership role, do yourself a favor and do some homework (like reading Art’s book), adjust your style and monitor how people are reacting to you. And don’t forget to ask for feedback from your boss, from your team members and from peers. Last and not least, it is a great help to have a mentor/friend lined up to keep you on track.
About Joe Zurawski: Joe is a strategy and innovation executive with a career that has spanned strategy development and execution, whole lifecycle product innovation and management, demand generation marketing, and global alliances. He has worked in electronics companies (including Motorola), software (Firstlogic/Business Objects, SPSS), and spent several years in management consulting at Ernst & Young. You can reach Joe at jzurawsk@chicagobooth.edu.
A Fresh Voice and Leadership and the Art of Apology
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management, Values
There’s an excellent post entitled, “Sorry is not the final word, just the beginning,” by guest author and Product/Project Management Consultant, Lisa Winter at one of my favorite blogs: The Art of Project Management. hosted by the UCSC-Extension in Silicon Valley.
Ms. Winter describes a situation where she inadvertently upset a valuable but delicate team member on a conference call, and then went to significant lengths to apologize and regain his support. In addition to the happy ending, this fine post prompted some thoughts on a topic that I confess I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about: the role of the apology as a leadership tool.
I can’t help but feel a little guilty that I’ve not raised this topic in the past, and for that, I apologize. (OK, I had to work it in somewhere…)
I have written extensively here at this blog and in Practical Lessons in Leadership on the need for leaders to not mask their own faults and shortcomings. In the book, I suggest that the point in time where everyone on the team sees the leader’s mistake is a powerful moment of truth. The leader can run, hide, dodge and deflect or she can show the team that she is human and leverage the failure as a teaching tool. Of course, this only works if she practices this same technique in the other direction when groups or individuals face setbacks.
But what about the apology? How many times have you observed someone in a position of authority make a decision that turned out to be horribly wrong and come back with an apology?
What about the leader that responded to you in a curt or less than respectful manner?
Good thing you didn’t hold your breath, waiting.
At least one of our national leaders went to the opposite extreme, seizing the opportunity to apologize for all of the nation’s historic mistakes ad nauseum (in my opinion). Rumor has it however, that he might not have been quite so apologetic for his alleged personal mistakes. Frankly, it was hard to tell when he was being sincere and when he was selling. You can draw your own conclusion, but I think Bill would have been a powerful force on a used car lot. (Sorry to those that I offended and Bill, I’m sorry too! Hey, this is getting easier!)
OK, enough tongue-in-cheek. Here are some of my thoughts on the issue and use of the apology as a leader. I’m looking forward to hearing from you, and again, if I’ve offended…
Leadership and the Apology
- Learning how to say the words, “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong” should be mandatory training for all leaders. Part of gaining trust and building credibility is showing everyone that you are human. Knowing how and when to use the words is the art of apologizing.
- You can easily adopt “apologizing” as a tactic and that is as incorrect as avoiding the apology when you’ve erred. Abuse the tool and people will quickly see through your disingenuous approach. I’ve observed early-career and first-time leaders that would assert themselves (appropriately) and then apologize for having had to assert themselves. This destroys the leader’s credibility.
- As a leader, you have to make tough calls and often those calls result in some pain. There are many, and perhaps most circumstances where an apology is not needed and would horribly derail your credibility.
- In circumstances where you’ve slipped and truly offended someone, run, don’t walk to apologize to the individual.
- Too many apologies for program failures or not hitting your goals and targets, and you will find yourself apologizing to your significant other for losing your job. As a subordinate, you might get away with this once, but as soon as it becomes a pattern, your boss will see your apologies as a mask for incompetence.
The Bottom Line for Now
Does leadership mean never having to say you’re sorry? I don’t think so. Nonetheless, I suspect that most leaders rarely utter the words, more out of fear of showing weakness than due to their lack of remorse for their transgressions.
What are your thoughts? I’m interested and suspect many readers are as well on the role and use of the apology as a leader.
Fresh Voices in Management Excellence: Greg Strouse and His Stories, Advice and Opinions on Working, Managing and Surviving the Corporate World
Filed under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Performance, Professional Growth, Strategy, Surviving Lousy Leaders
Note from Art, in proof that great minds think alike, I woke up, crafted today’s post and then read Greg’s latest only to see that he had referenced me. While this may look like a well-orchestrated mutual admiration campaign, I can assure you that it was purely coincidental. Don’t let his questionable taste in liking my blog detract from his remarkable writing!
Searching through the sea of business and leadership blogs has become a bit like a treasure hunt. I enjoy searching for great voices that have not yet jumped out of the search engines and on to everyone’s screen. Given the umpteen gazillion blogs in the world, it’s not surprising that there are some remarkable voices laboring away in the background.
One of those that deserves to be front and center is Greg Strouse’s Tales from an XOD, Stories, Advice and Opinions on Working, Managing and Surviving the Corporate World.
A little background. Greg uses the term XOD as short for Executive on Demand, which is how he characterizes his professional self. I met Greg on the phone a couple of years ago when he started his blog and was impressed. He’s a great, straight-shooting, creative and super-experienced professional with an easy to read, entertaining and wisdom packed approach to writing.
For some reason I lost track of Greg and his blog for a period of time, and it was my good fortune to reconnect with him recently. I went through a year’s worth of his weekly posts and kicked myself for missing out on these. Frankly, I’m just a bit jealous that he’s a better writer than I am and clearly a lot funnier as well!
I encourage you to take some time to check out Greg’s work at Tales from an XOD and make certain to subscribe. We’ll all be wiser and feel a bit better about the world in the process.
Some of my favorite, recent posts from Greg:
“You’re Kidding Me, Right,” where he engages with an airline representative on the use of his middle name in a scene that could easily have been written into a Seinfeld script and then follows it up with another brilliant example from yet another inept airline.
“Death to Smoochy,” tackles the topic of the current “economic conditions” with another fascinating discussion with his bank and some timely suggestions for businesses that are sleepwalking through this time.
“Logo Your Way to Success,“ where Greg suggests (tongue in cheek) that perhaps the Detroit Lions might reverse their winless ways by changing their logo.
“Don’t Know Everything” and “Hey Do You Still Make that Killer Meatloaf” offer up some great advice for leaders, owners and entrepreneurs.
OK, I could keep going on here, but I will leave the joy of discovery to you. I find it hard to quit reading Greg’s posts, both for the wit and for the great lessons, quotes and examples. I hope that you enjoy his work as much as I do, and don’t forget to take the time to let me…and more importantly, let Greg know what you think.
-
Chosen by Guy Kawasaki's Alltop.com as a top site in the Leadership category.
Podcast
Available Now!
Practical Lessons
e-book
e-book-Leadership and the Project Manager - Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance
