Want a Dream Team? Give a Visionary a Voice

December 4, 2009 By 5 Comments

Patterns in the SkyWho’s the Visionary on your team? Hint: chances are it’s not the leader.  Contrary to popular myth, “being a visionary” is neither a prerequisite for leading, nor is it bestowed upon the chosen few as they ascend to their lofty perches above us.

Many Visionaries labor in relative obscurity, often ignored or worse yet, mocked, because of their unique way of looking at the world and the issues in front of them.

If you are leading and are interested in building or creating something more than efficient machine with your team, you are well-served to seek out and cultivate those individuals who are capable of seeing patterns and pictures in the environment that the rest of us miss.

You know these people.  They are the ones that sit quietly in meetings while the inane debates rage over how to solve grossly tactical issues and they will occasionally look up and say, “Why don’t we?” or, “What if we did it this way?”  After a few moments of silence, someone will usually chime up and say, “Yeah, Mary has a point, what if we..?”  With a simple comment or observation, the entire direction of the conversation shifts…often for the better.

Consider this most famous of exchanges:

Lucy Van Pelt: Aren’t the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud’s formations. What do you think you see, Linus?
Linus Van Pelt: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean.
[points up]
Linus Van Pelt: That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there…
[points]
Linus Van Pelt: …gives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.
Lucy Van Pelt: Uh huh. That’s very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: Well… I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.

(from the site: The Internet Movie Database-memorable quotes from the movie, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.)

The Visionary in this situation is of course the blanket-toting Linus…the odd little kid that is operating on a different level than the rest of the gang.  When it comes to cloud gazing, I suspect that I am more like Charlie Brown in that exchange!

One of my favorite Visionaries reads this blog regularly. (I suspect he knows who he is, although I doubt anyone every offered him the label.)  This technologist propelled an entire organization on his ideas.  While his “visions” were not universally admired  by peers or instantly accepted, the fact was and is that his ideas solve technology conundrums for customers in remarkable ways.  (Note: visionaries often have detractors.)

Sometimes you need to look hard to find the Visionary on your team. In my own experience, they are not the classic “A” players that work circles around the rest of the team.  They aren’t the loudest…in fact quite the opposite.  They don’t tend to gravitate to the limelight.

Hints for Cultivating the Visionaries on Your Team:

  • Once you uncover someone that has more to offer than the transactional demands of the job, spend time to cultivate a relationship with the individual.  Take the time to carve out one on one time and to discuss vexing issues.  Ask for input  and listen carefully.
  • Don’t thrust them into the spotlight if they are uncomfortable with the visibility.
  • Place them on project teams where the challenges require new ways of doing things.  Choose a Project Manager that is good at drawing out alternative perspectives and managing the talent on the team.
  • Align Visionaries with doers.  My best teams have blended both in the right proportion to ensure both innovation and great execution.
  • And as a fair warning, be careful to not bestow a special label on the individual or you risk alienating him or her further and damaging your own credibility.  This isn’t an issue of playing favorites, it’s one of extracting the often quiet and potentially valuable voice on your team.

The Bottom-Line:

I’ll end where I started.  Want a dream team?  Give a visionary a voice and then listen hard and learn.

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Performance 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Leader, are you the problem with your team’s performance?

December 12, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Your leadership tactics just might be at the root of your team’s less than stellar performance

As a leader looking for ways to improve the performance of your team, it is important to spend some time examining the impact that you have on the working environment and productivity of your associates.  Effective self-examination might just help identify some opportunities for your own development that will spur the performance of those around you. 

In case you are reading and thinking, "It’s not me, It’s… ," think again.  I’ve often been invited to work with executives and managers on team performance issues, where it quickly becomes clear to everyone that many (not all) of the issues reside at the top of the food chain.  Some great leaders that I’ve worked with or for have embraced the reality that they have culpability for poor team performance, made the necessary changes and subsequently jumped back on the high-performance track.  Of course, some leaders are in perpetual denial about their own faults–there is only one solution in this case.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Previous Page