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Leadership Coaching and Consulting
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Using Questions to Become a Great Leader
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Tue, 21 Apr 2020 12:08:08 +0000
Some days, we just try to survive. Some days, especially in a leadership role we just hope their aren’t too many mistakes and that things go relatively smoothly so we can get things done, keep the lights on and get through the day. We are not really focused on what our best looks like, we […]
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Some days, we just try to survive. Some days, especially in a leadership role we just hope their aren’t too many mistakes and that things go relatively smoothly so we can get things done, keep the lights on and get through the day. We are not really focused on what our best looks like, we are more just hoping that things are not at their worst.
On our best days though, we show up excited about the chance to develop an incredible team, help people grow and learn and improve, and have conversations with others that can support them as they accomplish their goals. Some days, leadership feels different.
So what’s the difference in these two extremes; showing up trying to survive what comes at us and showing up excited about the chance to make a difference for the team and the organization? And how do some leaders seem to consistently be in this calm prepared place that allows them to lead at a higher level?
What I have noticed in consistently great leaders is that they have a different mindset because they have repetitively practiced the thoughts that will help them lead at their best. And, the most effective way to help anyone, even ourselves, consider a new mindset or thought pattern is by asking questions. So, it might be helpful to illustrate this mindset by using a set of questions that great leaders often consider. In fact, I have known some leaders that write these kinds of questions down and answer them, in writing, each day before work. It’s impossible not to improve as a leader with a routine like that. Give these questions a try and see if they open up some possibilities for you.
What does my team need from me today?
Answering this question immediately shifts us from a “me” centered approach to a one focused on “them” as we think about our role in supporting the team. It opens us up to creative ideas and solutions that will make help the team improve, grow and engage. I have often seen managers who think more about what they need from their team than what their team needs from them. They will even start sentences with “I need you.” Such as “I need you to pay more attention to detail” or “I need you to show up on time.” Those might be improvements, but really it’s the customers, the teammates and the business who need those things. What a manager often means when they use the word “need” that way is “my life would be easier if you would do things differently.” That might be true, but leadership is often executed at its worst if it is based on creating the easiest life for the leader. A great team will absolutely make a leader’s life easier, but focusing on that as an outcome will ensure that we don’t actually build that strong team we were hoping for.
What does each member of my team aspire to, or care about?
Every bit of human progress, motivation, or growth is generated by the want for something different. We as humans actually flood our brains with a different set of neurotransmitters that generate excitement, energy, and motivation when we consider a new possibility that we care about. It might be learning something new, becoming a more respected teammate, achieving something we haven’t yet, or making a bigger difference. It could be anything, but if we do not know what someone cares about we have no ability to lead them. Our job as leaders is to help people accomplish more than they could without us. But, the reality is that they will only consistently move toward things they actually care about achieving or having.
We like to think sometimes as leaders that because we have authority, they have to care about what we want them to care about. And we often threaten, preach, or otherwise use our authority to try and cause that to happen. Our reality as leaders though, is that people only move toward things they think are better for themselves in any sort of a consistent way, and telling them what we think they should do and then using authority to herd them in that direction is simply a recipe for creating a disengaged, mediocre, unhappy team. Those kinds of teams never deliver great results.
How can I have more conversations with my team that are not driven by their mistakes or shortcomings?
If we are in a management role it sometimes feels that the only time we talk to people is when they have done something wrong. Imagine how that might feel for you or any human.
When I work with organizations and ask about the balance of support and correction, team members often feel that they only get “coached” by a manager when they have made a mistake or displeased the manager in some way. Getting interacted with by management only when we are considered a problem is one of the most disengaging things that anyone can experience. As leaders though, we have to consider that we have trained ourselves, and are evolutionarily wired, to notice mistakes, problems, and issues far more frequently than we will see effort, engagement, or development. We can only notice these things if we schedule regular conversations with our team members that are based on the calendar, not their performance in that moment, and also train ourselves to catch people doing things right. Demotivating our team by only noticing their errors is a recipe for certain failure. And helping our team pursue excellence is not about a more aggressive lack of failure anyway. Supporting people as they become their best involves far more than just a focus on eliminating their mistakes.
Questions help us consider possibilities, create insight in ourselves and others, and chart a new course. Using questions to explore our possibilities as a leader who can take our team to new heights can be the catalyst for our own motivation for changes that we want to make. Use questions, these or others that might think of, to decide what kind of leader you want to be for your organization. And then explore all the possibilities in front of you as you continue that journey.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
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Working at Home with the Kids – A Road Map
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Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:56:22 +0000
Ok so we kinda woke up and the world was different. Maybe no zombies yet, but here we are trapped in our house with our kids and both of us trying to get things accomplished. We don’t have the benefit of play dates or day care or organized sports or any of that. It’s just […]
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Ok so we kinda woke up and the world was different. Maybe no zombies yet, but here we are trapped in our house with our kids and both of us trying to get things accomplished. We don’t have the benefit of play dates or day care or organized sports or any of that. It’s just us, the kids, and a tangled web of competing priorities and unfamiliar systems. There are some things we can do to make it successful though, whether there are two of you, one of you, both working, whatever the case. Here are five things to consider as you try to make this new world a productive and successful one.
1. Set and communicate expectations
Reality that is different from expectations is the source of most stress and yet sometimes we set ourselves up for it by having unrealistic expectations, keeping them to ourselves, or both.
First of all, set up realistic expectations with your spouse about how the day might look and what will really get accomplished. If I need two uninterrupted hours for me to dive into a project and my spouse thought we would all make a fun brunch together because most of her calls are in the afternoon, we are headed for a mess. If I think that I will get all my work done, take time for the kids when they need it, be the magical Dad or Mom that drops everything to build a pillow fort and also asks patiently how the online schooling went today, I could be setting myself up for failure that way too.
The answer might be, I am going to deal with these priorities today and do my best at a few other things but life is a little different now and doing my best is enough.
2. Make a plan
If we work together to put something everyone understands in place, we have a decent shot at a good day. Maybe it’s, “let me get some focused work done this morning and then I will play with the kids at two o’clock and we can all take a walk together at four o’clock, how does that sound?” The answer might be, “Well I have a call at ten o’clock that I have to take, can you run interference from ten to eleven if I need it?” A response may look like, “Ok, I can work on my project from eleven to one if you could do lunch with the kids..” High five, go team. Or elbow bump if you are trying to build a new habit around that and want to practice.
3. Involve the kids
Once you two have a plan together, involve the kids. “Ok team quarantine, here is how tomorrow is going to look, we are rocking breakfast all together how does smiley face pancakes sound? Great, then you focus on your classes and after that Mom is making lunch with you guys, and then I’m doing pillow forts at two o’clock and we are all cruising the neighborhood at four o’clock. How do you like the plan and is there anything we need to change?”
“Dad, pillow forts are lame, can we do window art so everyone can see it when they walk by our house instead?”
“Window art sounds amazing, during lunch you guys think about what you want to draw and I will bring the dry erase markers at 2:00 for us to get started.”
4. Talk about the new behaviors together
We want the kids, and maybe us too, to practice the things that may seem different for them or be new behaviors. It might be, “what do you do if Mom or Dad are on the phone and you need something?” Hey maybe we even take that a step further. “If it involves bleeding what do you do, if it is a question you have, what do you do, if you want to tell me something, what do you do?” This way we don’t allow our kids to have expectations for how we might help them that we have no chance of living up to. That just causes anxiety and stress for them and eventually, us. Let’s talk about what everyone working from home means and how we do it well. We can even make it a two way street. “Hey, what should I do if you are in the middle of a class and I have a question for you?” This is about us all collaborating to make this work well, not just our kids understanding our boundaries.
5. Celebrate success
When we crush a work from home day, we can look for fun ways to celebrate, maybe the walk works, maybe we need to do sidewalk art too, maybe we need milkshakes or a movie. The chance for all of us to reflect on the fact that we did our best together to have a day that was both productive and fun is important. These might be new skills for all of us and celebrating progress makes all the difference when we are learning. Then, we get to plan tomorrow so we can rock another amazing day together. There’s an amazing new world that we just might create on the other side of the chaos, because of who we become by dealing with it well. Embrace that, even enjoy that. How we handle this will teach our kids how to handle their own adversity. Chances are they will need that somewhere down the road.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
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Leadership is About Creating Insight
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Mon, 31 Jul 2017 19:21:49 +0000
Recently I arrived in my neighborhood after a pretty severe storm. Trees were down everywhere, a gas line had ruptured, homes had been damaged, and everyone was dealing with debris. On the way to my house, I drove slowly to survey the wreckage. Many of the homes had trees down in the yard and limbs […]
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Recently I arrived in my neighborhood after a pretty severe storm. Trees were down everywhere, a gas line had ruptured, homes had been damaged, and everyone was dealing with debris. On the way to my house, I drove slowly to survey the wreckage. Many of the homes had trees down in the yard and limbs strewn across their roofs and porches. Although I knew it was unlikely, all I could think about was whether my property had escaped serious damage.
Before I could get there, I passed a residence with a massive Bradford Pear tree sprawled across the driveway, blocking it and trapping the owners at home. An impromptu assembly line had formed around it, and I slowed down to watch as a few people worked at the tree with chainsaws, and others dragged cut limbs away and placed them in piles along the street. My thoughts quickly shifted from watching the others work to how I might be able to help. In that instant, I went from being an observer, to making a choice to participate. I rolled down my window and shouted that I would be back to help in a minute. I drove to my house, changed clothes, grabbed gloves, and was headed out the door when my son and his friend asked if they could help. We grabbed more gloves and water and headed back to help our neighbor.
We helped clear that tree and then worked on several more trees in other yards until it got too dark out to see. I was proud that my son got to be part of something that made a difference for others. However, that probably would not have happened if others hadn’t already been helping when I drove by. When I entered my neighborhood that evening, I wasn’t thinking about ways I could be of service. I wasn’t even focused on the challenges my neighbors might be facing. I was only focused internally until others, through their choices and actions, provided a moment of insight about what I should be doing and how I could start doing it.
Taking Action with Your Leadership
Leadership is like that-it often boils down to taking actions or having conversations that cause others to become more valuable than they would have without you. A lot of good work was done in my neighborhood the evening of that storm because someone took the initiative to start helping others. Anyone can lead. Your choices and actions determine your ability to influence others far more than your role, title, or tenure. Even when we build new manager training or leadership development programs in our organizations, we need to give serious thought to what leadership means in our business, and what behaviors we want to encourage so that we cause that picture of leadership to come to life. Teaching people to be a catalyst for others, to plan for that, prepare for that, develop themselves for that, and to engage in that, is how we go from being a team with potential to a team celebrating success.
Sometimes, it only takes a moment of insight for someone to decide to make a bigger impact with what they do next. Leaders cause that insight, and it can happen anywhere.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
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Work-Life Balance Is A Myth; Plan for Work-Life Harmony Instead
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Wed, 17 May 2017 18:13:03 +0000
Leadership isn’t easy. Being a great leader means you’re at your best when your team is around. It means you show up fully engaged and serve as a role model for how others work, how they communicate, how they solve problems and the kind of attitude they choose. If you are leading others, or really, […]
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Leadership isn’t easy. Being a great leader means you’re at your best when your team is around. It means you show up fully engaged and serve as a role model for how others work, how they communicate, how they solve problems and the kind of attitude they choose. If you are leading others, or really, showing up at your best in anything, you had better be prepared to bring it.
Interestingly enough, many of us think we can simply “bring it” on demand. Often, we are able to for a short period of time. We can usually muster the energy necessary to get through a day of being fully “on,” or a tough week of constant interaction. However, must of us are lousy at sustaining that without suffering from burnout or disengagement over time. Eventually, we find ourselves contemplating the ever-present question of how to achieve work-life balance. We know we need to equal out the time and effort we spend on each part of our world; we’re just not sure how to do that.
When I work with leaders I no longer focus on work-life balance. The word “balance” implies both work and life are given equal weight and time. However, most of us would weigh our outside-of- work life with more importance while admitting that our time is heavily weighted towards work. We will likely never achieve balance between the two, and struggling to do so can be just as stressful as not having that equality to begin with. That is why, instead of balance, I discuss work-life harmony.
Think about it this way; imagine you have adopted a new puppy. You have an older dog that, much to your chagrin, hates the little intruder and attacks him at every opportunity. What would you do? If getting rid of one of the dogs isn’t an option, you would need to develop a plan to keep the puppy alive and allow the dogs to work towards living together. You might put up gates or re-structure feeding times or schedule separate play and training time. Whatever the plan, it’s centered on creating harmony between competing forces, when you still want or need both things in your world. We can do the same thing with work and life but the key point is, we need a plan or we’re gonna lose a puppy.
Here are a few ways to improve our planning for work-life harmony.
Prioritize activities that help you recharge
Although it’s often not possible to create consistency in your weekly schedule, it is necessary to find a way to devote at least some time to the activity that helps you recharge most effectively. This may be working out, listening to music, meditation, spending time with the kids, or working on your golf game. Whatever it is, identify it clearly and construct time in your schedule to do this activity, no matter what. It may seem like an impossibility some weeks, but taking time to revitalize yourself will make you more productive in the long run. Because of this, this is one area where you want to be inflexible; be consistent in your planning of these activities and be sure not to go through a week without them. Make it as important as showering or brushing your teeth.
Don’t look for consistency, look for opportunity
It’s unlikely that every week, or any week, will be anywhere near balanced, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find opportunities to integrate work and life more harmoniously. Maybe the kids have a sleepover away from home that provides you with the opportunity to work on that big work project for a few hours. Or, maybe you get back from a work trip at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday. which provides you with the opportunity to take the kids or your significant other to a movie or enjoy a long workout. Rather than struggling to find a consistent pattern of balance, look for opportunities that already exist to more effectively structure the harmony that you need. Glance at your calendar for the next three weeks and find spots you can take advantage of to get more harmony.
Capitalize on the known rhythm of work and life
Both work and life have their ebbs and flows. If you’re in a sales leadership job, you’re likely to be busier at the end of the quarter. If you have kids in school, their summer schedules might look different than their schedules during the school year. Leverage these changes by looking for ways to exploit the natural rhythm of things and plan to do just that. Without a plan in place, it’s easy to let every day fill up with work whether you need to devote your full attention to it or not.
If you are leading others, you become the catalyst for their growth, their development, and their achievements. Doing this requires a great deal of energy, and without harmony in your life, you’ll lack the capacity to do this to the best of your ability for very long. By building a plan to create work-life harmony, you can lead yourself well, and, as a result, have the capability to lead others toward more than they could accomplish without you.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
Contact us to learn more
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How to Lead Sustainable Change
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Wed, 12 Apr 2017 15:57:52 +0000
Most people think change is hard. In business, whether it’s a process change or a complete cultural shift, I hear leaders and managers consistently frustrated with the speed and success of change on teams and in organizations. They describe teams as resistant to change, stuck in their ways, and comfortable with the status quo. They […]
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Most people think change is hard. In business, whether it’s a process change or a complete cultural shift, I hear leaders and managers consistently frustrated with the speed and success of change on teams and in organizations. They describe teams as resistant to change, stuck in their ways, and comfortable with the status quo. They also describe situations where individuals or teams are forced to change, but then, relatively quickly, return to their previous habits or patterns. It’s exhausting for leaders to work to create change – only to then have to expend energy all over again because the change didn’t last. There are two kinds of change you can lead: reactive change and sustainable change.
Reactive change is simply people using willpower to change because they feel like they should, have a short-term incentive, or are avoiding pain or consequences. As soon as the stimulus or threat is removed, they return to their regular habits or patterns. Sustainable change happens when people have a desire to achieve a new end state and develop the habits and patterns that help them do that.
Here are some ways to tell which change you might be creating in your business or on your team:
Reactive Change: It feels urgent and immediate. Change is about choices and learning, and usually, those things don’t happen instantly. If someone shows up to work drastically different one day based on someone telling them to, or responds to negative feedback by immediately claiming they will be different going forward, don’t expect it to last. Not because they don’t have good intentions, but because real change takes a little time. What if you had to drive a stick shift immediately and you had never done it before? What if you had to immediately start asking better and more frequent questions as a manager coaching others? Most people can’t decide, learn, process, and create new habits that quickly. When you light a fire under people to cause change, you simply settle for reactive change that won’t last.
Reactive Change: It’s done “to” others rather than “with” them. If change feels like it’s directed, enforced, or “handed down” then it probably won’t be sustainable. In this situation, management becomes the enforcer, and that’s never a viable, long-term solution. Even if managers manage to keep people in line with the new way of doing things, they crush engagement in the process, and the business erodes as a result of a poor culture. No one wants to work in that type of environment; even the managers usually hate feeling like a prison guard much of the time. No one is focusing on growth in this kind of business, and the team is simply trying not to get caught breaking the rules. Welcome to the kind of place the best performers leave as quickly as they can.
Reactive Change: The goals belong to management. Management decided on the change, possibly attempted to sell it to the team by saying it was a good thing for them, and then gave the team instructions on how to implement the change. When was the last time you made a real difference to anything because someone else thought you should, but you didn’t agree, didn’t understand, or weren’t sure about where you were headed or why?
Sustainable Change: It happens at the speed of understanding. Teams are allowed time to process and understand the change. Change has to be understood before people can even decide on whether or not they agree with it. Individuals need to think about the challenges, the mechanics of doing things differently, and the risks and benefits associated with the change. If you want sustainable change, even if it is handed down from above, allow the team to figure out how to enact the change, talk candidly about the challenges, and work their way through them. Most people don’t want to lead a revolution against change if it seems to be well-intentioned, but they still need to figure out how to make it work for them.
Sustainable Change: It’s done collaboratively. The most lasting change happens with involvement, not just compliance. People readily make changes for things in which they are involved. It’s the difference between your spouse picking your new car out — even if you have never talked about what kind of new car you wanted – and going shopping together for the right one. If you are expecting a team to essentially live in a new world they do things differently, allow them to help design the space and contribute to the change, not just live in a world someone else created. When we are involved in change, it becomes our change, not someone else’s.
Sustainable Change: The goals belong to everyone. Consider this. If I were to ask a member of a team involved in reactive change why they are changing, the answer is usually something like, “management told us to.” When I ask someone involved in sustainable change why they are changing, the answer is more like “we think this will help us be more efficient and provide better service.” Which person is more committed to doing things to make the change happen in a sustainable way? It’s very easy to know if your team shares the goals of the modification with management or not. Just ask them what the goals are and why they’re important to them. If it doesn’t matter, it won’t be sustainable.
Change is challenging, even when we want it and have a good plan to make it happen. It’s nearly impossible when someone else wants it for us, and we go along with it begrudgingly in an attempt to stay out of trouble. If we want the future of the business to be different, it’s our job as leaders to create sustainable change to which our team is committed. If we find ourselves enforcing, policing, punishing, or fighting resistance, we’ve done something wrong in the change process, and we are now the proud owners of reactive, unsustainable change that is only temporary. The good news is if we alter the road map for change we can reach an entirely different destination.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
Contact us to learn more
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Waiting for Change
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Wed, 22 Mar 2017 15:05:26 +0000
I was working with a team not too long ago and, during a discussion on a particular organizational change, one of the team members stated, “We need someone at the top to own this and drive it.” While the words may differ from person to person, it’s pretty common to hear individuals in an organization […]
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I was working with a team not too long ago and, during a discussion on a particular organizational change, one of the team members stated, “We need someone at the top to own this and drive it.”
While the words may differ from person to person, it’s pretty common to hear individuals in an organization describe change as “something someone else with more authority needs to make happen”. What’s interesting is that oftentimes, people believe the person above them should be responsible for change — but when you ask the person above them, they think the person above them should be responsible, and so on and so on. If we follow that logic, ultimately there is one individual at the top of the organization who can make change happen. If that person is responsible for every change, improvement, shift, or solution in the business, the business is in dire trouble.
There is no question that change can happen from the top. But it can also happen from the middle and even the bottom. It can happen on individual teams, in a department, in a function, or it can begin with one person in a cubicle who takes the initiative to do something differently.
Have you ever watched someone do something hard or challenging, and then felt compelled to change something about yourself to address the same challenge? Have you ever observed someone on a team put a process in place that others adopted because it worked so well? Or been a part of a team where the leader inspired others or caused them to push beyond what they perceived as personal limitations? What if more people in your business were causing change and fewer people were waiting for it?
Change happens when someone decides to contribute, in a committed way, to improving something. That’s all it takes and the “someone” doesn’t have to be the CEO.
When we begin to ask ourselves different questions, we start the process of finding different solutions. What if everyone in an organization asked themselves the question, “How can I make change happen or contribute to a change that would make our business or team better?” What if every morning each person wrote down three things that would answer that question? The result would be individuals are actually making positive change a habit, not just an intention or even worse, something that someone else does because they have a different title.
As leaders, part of our job is leading change. Nothing gets better without it. No better future can be achieved by waiting for it. If we believe change is a function of hierarchical power, rather than individual initiative, we lose our ability to cause it or support it unless we are the CEO.
Our ability to lead change begins with the understanding that it can happen anywhere. Our job is to consistently ask the questions that plant seeds for change and then support the involvement of others as they shape it and make it better.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
Contact us to learn more
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3 Things To Remember When You Are Leading Others
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Wed, 22 Mar 2017 14:57:46 +0000
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you think of all the things that you have to do as a leader. The responsibilities that typically come with a leadership role can be daunting. Leaders manage projects as well as people – and it’s easy to get wrapped up in what we want to do, without remembering […]
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It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you think of all the things that you have to do as a leader. The responsibilities that typically come with a leadership role can be daunting. Leaders manage projects as well as people – and it’s easy to get wrapped up in what we want to do, without remembering that our actions as leaders actually define and affect the culture in the business, as well as the behaviors of others.
I worked with a leader once who said she wanted people to be efficient with their time and prioritize the needs of the business and the customer, but then she said and did things that caused entire divisions of people to waste thousands of hours on non-essential projects. As a result, people were more focused on what would make her happy or keep them in her good graces than they were what the customer or the business needed. When we get into roles with authority, we shouldn’t use them to marshal our own league of minions, even if we are doing it accidentally.
There are a lot of things to remember as you ascend into leadership. Here are three things to keep in mind if you are going to cause people to focus on what will grow the business, not what will serve the leader.
Your words carry psychological weight.
If you are in an individual contributor role and happen to mention in a meeting that we should do something differently in our business, people will probably listen — they might even agree with you — but often, nothing else happens. If you are the leader of the business, immediately after those words leave your mouth, people are sending emails, making notes, changing the duties of others below them, and spending valuable time on your idea. If you meant for that to happen, great. But there are opportunity costs for every set of actions, and you need to be clear about the fact that they will stop doing something you said was important last week to focus on this new thing you care about. It’s far better to have a set of guiding principles and business priorities that don’t waiver, based on an idea you had, if you want people focused on fewer, more important things. If you mention that the food at the meeting wasn’t very good, expect your team to spend way too much time worrying about the food for the next meeting, spending more money than they needed to on it, and obsessing for hours over a menu. They may even involve you and help you waste some of your valuable time deciding on the soup and whether to have marble cake or apple pie for dessert. If you want focus, you will destroy it by tossing out what you think are interesting ideas or minor complaints, without a clear picture of how people should act on those ideas and involvement of others to help build an executable plan.
People lie to you every day.
Not necessarily on purpose, but they do. They shade the stories they tell you so that they are more favorable. They tell you mostly what you want to hear, avoid confronting you with reality when needed, and keep bad news to themselves. Even when I have worked with leaders that swear their team is brutally honest with them. A few quick conversations with the team illustrate that the leader is getting the made-for-TV movie, not the documentary. In order to lead, you need to understand the documentary; the real story. As a leader, your job is to receive feedback from your team, not have to tell your team to give you feedback. The questions you ask determine the answers you receive. “How’s it going?” will yield platitudes and safe statements. “Tell me three things I could be doing better as a leader and that we could be doing better as a business?”, will get you much closer to the truth.
You are constantly on stage.
What you do, and how you do it, will cause change in the organization immediately. The level of energy and focus you bring will influence others, and the things you spend your time on will be judged constantly. You are free to react impulsively, rant, or shut your door and hide, but these things will add to the narrative about you and the culture you create. People are constantly discussing your motives and their interpretation of your behaviors and then making decisions on their level of engagement and commitment based on those interpretations. When someone says, “she just stays in her office a lot” or “he always drags in on Mondays”, they make choices about how much effort they will put into being involved or inclusive and showing up fully engaged. If the leader isn’t fully engaged, why should they be? Yes, that makes leadership lonely and difficult sometimes. We became leaders though, hopefully, because of the impact we can have on others. Well, welcome to impact. The good news is, it works both ways. If you involve, collaborate, and engage others that will become the culture over time, too. If you show up energized and focused, others will observe that and raise their own bar a little. As a leader, you get to decide on what kind of impact you have, but only if you make conscious choices about it, instead of simply doing what’s convenient, comfortable, or habitual.
Leadership is an incredible capability to have, and a very rewarding endeavor. It does, however, mean that we need to be conscious about what it means to others and how we execute that role. We need to make choices about the outcomes we want and then do the things that cause those outcomes. We must also fully understand the power a business hierarchy gives us, and use it to cause our team and our people to be better. And that might mean we have to change our own behaviors first.
Leading Through Influence
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You Don’t Have All the Answers…So Have Great Questions
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Mon, 13 Mar 2017 18:10:53 +0000
I watch a lot of managers work really hard to show up with all of the answers. It’s a natural impulse for a leader to want to solve all of the problems, know everything, and help people with information. Typically, though, the unintended consequence of this is, well, you have to have all of the […]
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I watch a lot of managers work really hard to show up with all of the answers. It’s a natural impulse for a leader to want to solve all of the problems, know everything, and help people with information. Typically, though, the unintended consequence of this is, well, you have to have all of the answers. (And no one has all of the answers.) It also means that your team can’t have any of the answers because the boss has them all. So the expectation becomes that the team has questions for the boss, and the boss has answers for the team. The scenario plays out this way in businesses everywhere, every day; and it hinders a business’ ability to change, grow, innovate, and thrive.
CONSIDER THIS: What if leaders worked to show up with questions instead of answers? What if our job as leaders was to make people think about solutions, rather than hand out solutions? What if our goal was to build the capability to solve problems on our team, not to just solve the problems ourselves?
Typically, managers feel like it’s faster to simply tell people what to do. The truth is, the telling part is faster but the organizational problem-solving time is slower. It’s only faster for the manager. It’s also easy to focus on the time spent on a single problem (“It only took a minute to fix!”), rather than the fact that you just spent an entire day, or maybe you spend every day, solving relatively minor problems. The reality is that rather than taking a walk to the boss’s office or picking up the phone to check with her, efficient teams are inspired and empowered to make good decisions and move on.
Learning happens when people have to think about challenges and create solutions. Growth and innovation happen when we have insight. Insight happens in one very specific region of the brain and when it does, we actually release neurotransmitters that help us formulate a plan, consider a new approach, and tackle a new challenge. Instructions do not cause insight; questions do.
People are more committed to activities they choose for themselves than they are to the activities they are told to execute. Our job as a leader is to help them make choices about how they tackle a problem or approach a situation differently. If you want full engagement from your team, you can only get there through their choices.
Of course, there are times when we need to share information, give instructions, or provide an answer, but there are far more opportunities when we could build capability, foster learning, and create insight. Our ultimate job as leaders is to have impact on others and questions have more impact than statements. Perhaps we need to value our ability to ask great questions more than our ability to have the right answers.
Leading Through Influence
We develop better leaders so they can build a better future. Explore our solutions for leadership training and executive coaching, including a complete menu of virtual options, custom-built webinars, and interactive workshops.
On location or online, we help your leadership learn, grow, and lead.
Contact us to learn more
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Leadership Is Just Uncomfortable
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Mon, 20 Feb 2017 18:17:59 +0000
I’m sure I don’t actually hear “the phrase” all the time. But it certainly feels like I hear it more and more as I work with teams and leaders. It’s a little phrase that gets in the way, a lot. It gets in the way of progress and growth. And it gets in the way […]
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I’m sure I don’t actually hear “the phrase” all the time. But it certainly feels like I hear it more and more as I work with teams and leaders. It’s a little phrase that gets in the way, a lot. It gets in the way of progress and growth. And it gets in the way of the future. It’s not always a bad thing to say. In fact, there are times when it is appropriate and real and should be listened to. However, there are many more times when it needs to be discarded, called out for the roadblock that it is, and banished from our thinking.
Here’s an example of a time that I heard the insidious little phrase:
Recently, I was working with someone on a team and they developed a minor conflict with another team member. I asked them the same question I always ask when someone describes a conflict with a team member, “Have you talked to them about this issue?” And then “the phrase” made its appearance: “I don’t feel comfortable doing that.” It’s gotten to the point where I can feel myself cringe a bit when I hear “the phrase”. I need to work on that. I cringe because there seems to be an implied belief that we should feel comfortable.
Growth is not comfortable. Learning is not comfortable. Leadership is not comfortable. In fact, none of these things should be comfortable. Think of three things in your world that you are proud of accomplishing. Would you describe achieving any of them as comfortable?
More and more it seems as if we have come to believe that discomfort, even on a minor scale, is a bad thing and should be avoided at all costs. Discomfort gives us the justification to avoid having a needed conversation with a teammate, suggesting a new idea in a meeting, or telling our boss that they aren’t communicating clea