Influence & Insight | December 2023

Leadership Story | Leadership is a Spectrum

This past month afforded an opportunity to speak at the 2023 Autism Speaks Walk Tampa kickoff. Fifteen years attending these walks and having a child on the spectrum has taught me that something special is going on during these events. To an outsider, it would be easy and convenient to consider the people at our walks unfortunate, disabled or something generally negative. That’s not what I see, or put another way, that’s not our story. 

The event planners let me know I had no more than five minutes to speak. One of the great things about having only five minutes to speak is that our message must be clear, and short.

Five minutes.

Well, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner in Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership inform us that there are five practices of exemplary leadership:

Model the Way
Inspire a Share Vision
Challenge the Process
Enable Others to Act
Encourage the Heart

Five minutes. Five practices. 

Those on the spectrum and their families Model the Way daily, often leading productive, fulfilling lives despite unkind or unaccepting environments. We have a Shared Vision of a positive future, especially for those on the spectrum transitioning into adulthood. For this to be successful, we’re Challenging many Processes, and more importantly mindsets. During our walks, and increasingly throughout the year, we’re calling on community leaders and organizations to Enable Others to Act - to get our positive word out, to embrace and to accept. Finally, for anyone connected to someone on the spectrum, we discovered long ago our loved ones have big Hearts, which we need to Encourage.

Five minutes. That’s my story.

Leadership is a Spectrum.

TRUST FACTOR | Book Review

Cultures are the way social creatures transmit information about
how we do things and the values we hold sacred. (p. 3)

Paul Zak offers a biological basis for the formation of trust, or a persuasive explanation how me may best energize ourselves and others. Zak was the first scientist to show that the brain synthesizes the neurochemical oxytocin, and that oxytocin causes us to reciprocate by being trustworthy (p. 5).

Jim Collins has written a lot about Core Values and stresses the need for alignment. Zak informs us that the energy source for living our values is oxytocin. An organization’s performance can be stated as an engineering relationship three components – people, organization, and purpose – determine performance (p. 9).

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.579459/fullOvation

 Peter Drucker wrote:

“Your first and foremost job as a leader
is to take charge of your own energy and then
help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.” (p. 25)

Zak’s book is structured around the acronym OXYTOCIN, and this review selects key passages from each of his eight key chapters and their relevance to best leader practices.

Ovation

Think of ovation as a deliberate form of appreciation, or a type of feedback. There are two routes through which Ovation affects the brain and therefore motivation and teamwork. First Ovation can cause the direct release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain (p. 34). This reminds me of my last direct report team while working at ITT. We called ourselves the six-pack and started every Monday morning stand up meeting with one team member recognizing another for an achievement or team contribution performed in the past week the rest of the group was unaware of. Zak informs us that dopamine’s effect is most powerful when Ovation is unexpected, tangible, and personal (p. 34).

eXpectation

Another form of feedback is coaching, and we can recall the Academy Leadership definition of performance coaching as the process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to develop themselves and become more successful. Zak delineates between chronic stress, the kind that weighs on our shoulders and never seems to dissipate with challenge stress, which is good for us (p. 47). When we provide an environment of challenge stress our oxytocin level increases far more than our stress hormones. This is probably why a SPRINT-type management methodology with frequent feedback is far superior to our antiquated annual performance reviews (APRs).

Yield

Successful leaders generously delegate.

Just like the huddle used in sports, a supervisor’s role
in a high Yield organization is akin to a coach
or counselor rather than an omniscient dictator. (p. 69)

Delegation alone is not enough. Consider delegating even when mistakes are likely to occur and fostering a team environment whereby sharing successes and failures openly leads to higher engagement. Often younger and less-experienced colleagues are your chief innovators (p. 74). The more we solicit and offer feedback, the greater chances for insights and innovation.

Transfer

In his seminal work Drive, Dan Pink cites autonomy, mastery and purpose and genuine motivators once we’re paid enough to not “think about money.” Transfer is akin to mastery. A 2012 Intelligent Office Work IQ Survey found that nearly two-thirds of employees aspire to be autonomous at work (p. 85). Another operative term is flexibility. Business publications such as the Wall Street Journal continue printing articles about employee dissatisfaction “returning to office,” post-Covid. Loss of Transfer, autonomy and flexibility are likely causes.

Openness

Pfeffer and Sutton discover the few organizations that have crossed The Knowing-Doing-Gap treat knowledge as an active sharing process, rather than something to file and protect from others. Openness is Zak’s aggressive form of Knowledge Sharing. Only 40 percent of employees report that they are well informed about their companies, goals, strategies, and tactics (p. 102). Recall in Academy Leadership Core Values Alignment workshops, we stress making fundamental decisions such as hiring and firing based on shared values before developing strategies.

Caring

In the past few years, empathy is increasingly an articulated value in Personal Leadership Philosophy workshops. Perhaps this reflects the trend toward seeking purpose in our work. Zak finds that caring environments are more productive and innovative. Teamwork, including the stress of eXpectation, stimulates the release of oxytocin, which increases empathy between work colleagues (p. 119). My belief is teamwork, coupled with an abundance mindset leads to breakthrough, innovation, and ultimately, gratitude.

Invest

Invest is another term for a developmental mindset and environment. Jennifer Deal reaffirmed in What Millennials Want From Work that younger generations expect a developmental plan as part of the employer/employee social contract. Accenture’s 2015 survey of college graduates finds that for those in their 20s, the most important factor in selecting a workplace is professional development. Contrast this expectation with the typical large company identifying a very small group of “High Potentials” for career advancement. Excluding so many is a recipe for disengagement and high turnover.

Natural

Authenticity and vulnerability well describe Zak’s term Natural. Rather than attempt a facade of all-knowing perfection, simply be human. Zak cites Jim Whitehurst, CEO of open-source software maker Red Hat:

“I found that being very open about the things I did not know
actually had the opposite effect than I would have thought.
It helped me build credibility.” (p. 156)

People have great BS detectors, in addition to unlimited access to information. Authenticity is a requirement in all leaders today.

Summary

Zak untimely concludes

Joy = Trust x Purpose

And that effective cultures cause colleagues to experience Joy at work (p. 172). We can also think of Joy as a form of gratitude, or a very concentrated energy source. For a deeper dive, Zak offers an Ofactor survey at Ofactor.com/book to measure trust in your organization and the eight factors that create trust (p. 29).

Trust profoundly improves and organizational performance
by providing the foundation of effective teamwork
and intrinsic motivation. (p. 7)

Coaching Story | Leaders Continuously Align with Values

In TRUST FACTOR, Paul Zak demonstrates that our brains synthesize oxytocin leading to increased trust. He also cites Peter Drucker: “Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you,” Let’s think of building trust as filling a gas tank, and then ask the question “Where are we going as a leader or what is the best use of our energy?”

During our Academy Leadership Core Values Alignment workshop, we share that in a typical organization, developing core values is often treated as an administrative or marketing activity, spending:

0-5% of time Identifying Core Values
90-100% of time Drafting and Redrafting Statements
0-5% of time Creating Alignment

We’ve visited these organizations before, where we may view a slick color poster declaring Customer Service as a core value while endlessly awaiting an indifferent service employee. The desired organization is one where we’re spending:

10-20% of time Identifying Core Values
0-5% of time Drafting and Redrafting Statement
80-90% of time Creating Alignment

Tony Hsieh, while leading Zappos, wrote about this in Delivering Happiness. Hsieh shares his realization, during a rapid expansion, that a list of core values should serve as a hiring guide. In fact, it was someone from the legal department that came up with the idea. Initially there were thirty seven values, ranging from Culture is Everything to A Little Weird. Eventually this led to a list of ten core values, and they look different than most company core values. Hsieh learned that gaining commitment, or alignment, was the real challenge and it took about a year of sharing, gaining suggestions and feedback before the company really embraced them. 

Imaging how much energy it took to do this. We’re going to need a full gas tank for this journey, and thanks to Paul Zak and Peter Drucker, we know that building trust and energizing those around us will lead to a successful outcome.

Leaders Continuously Align with Values.

Influence & Insight | November 2023

Leadership Story | Leaders Adapt

Organizational trust sure seems low at many organizations lately. Two recent instances highlight the issue well:

First, a client who is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the county level, realized the primary cultural/leadership issue is a profound lack of trust, which has existed for an extended period of time. This is what prompted both the review of Covey’s The SPEED of Trust and study of Paul Zak’s TRUST FACTOR. We can think of Covey’s book as a diagnostic how-to book similar to Crucial Conversations and Zak’s as a researcher’s broad-based cultural findings. In Zak’s introduction, he mentions his 2001 research which showed that a culture of trust was among the most powerful predictors economists had ever found to explain why some countries are prosperous while others are poor. Or, that high-trust countries have more social interactions that result in more economic transactions the create more wealth than do low-trust countries. Both works will inform the transformative programs with my CIO colleague.

Second, Covey’s first Core of Credibility, deals with the issue of integrity. He uses the term congruence, or being congruent, inside and out. “It’s having the courage to act in accordance with your values and beliefs.” Interestingly, a new client, the president of a construction company, asked me to facilitate an Academy Leadership Advanced Leadership Course. One of the most significant parts of this course is the Core Values Alignment workshop. whereby organizations not only define their core values, they develop normative behavioral statements for each of their core values. We’ve already arranged an off-site course with the senior leaders of the company. A terrific trust-building opportunity.

Leaders Develop Trust

The SPEED of Trust | Book Review

CFOs and auditors have replaced people developers
have replaced people and strategic-minded
HR practitioners in the throne room. (p. xxiv)

Originally published in 2006, Stephen M. R. Covey’s prescient work rings a bell. At the heart of the “Return to Office” issue is trust, or the unstated If I Don’t See You, You Probably Aren’t Working. When our start-up was acquired by ITT in 2006, the defense group had recently been cited by the U.S. government for an export violation. This was apparent upon my first visit to Fort Wayne headquarters and taking notice of the apparently limitless and growing compliance staff.

Covey offers a powerful economics of trust model (p. 13):

                                          ↓ Trust   =    ↓Speed        ↑ Cost

                                          ↑  Trust   =    ↑ Speed        ↓Cost

Imagine facilitating a discussion where individuals share examples of business slowing down, unnecessary “cover your ass” communication and the associated costs. When trust is high, the dividend you receive is like a performance multiplier (p. 19). Want a deeper dive? Check out the Summary of Taxes and Dividends chart on pages 22-24 -- an excellent primer for organizational self-evaluation and open discussion.

This review focuses primarily on the Covey’s first and second waves of trust: Self Trust and Relationship Trust.

Self

Accountability starts with us in the leader role. Research shows that many of us don’t follow through on the goals we set or don’t keep the promises and commitments we make to ourselves (p. 47). We’re not talking about sensational transgressions that make the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Most of the time, it’s not the huge, visible withdrawals like major ethics violations that wipe out organizational trust. It’s the little things – a day at a time a weak or dishonest act at a time – that gradually weaken and corrode credibility (p. 49). Tie in PLP somewhere credibility and trust.

Covey Illustrates the four cores of credibility as a tree (p. 57)

Integrity is walking your talk. It’s being congruent, inside, and out (p. 56). In our Academy Leadership Accountability workshop, this is what we mean by It’s Starts With You. Intent has to do with our motives, our agendas, and our resulting behavior (p. 56). Recall the instinctive dimension colors within our Energize2Lead profiles gives insight into each of our motivational drivers. Capabilities are the abilities we have that inspire confidence – our talents, attitudes, skills, knowledge, and style (p. 57). These are likely the most visible of our cores developed over a lifetime of education and workplace experience. Results refer to our track record, our performance, our getting the right things done (p. 57). Or put another way, what we’re effective, rather than efficient at.

The problem in organizations, however, is that many ‘ethics”
solutions focus on compliance and not on clarifying values and
fostering integrity to those values and to enduring principles (p. 63).

Relationships

Covey outlines thirteen behaviors comprising relationship trust and form the core of the book (p. xxii):

1.            Talk Straight
2.            Demonstrate Respect
3.            Create Transparency
4.            Right Wrongs
5.            Show Loyalty
6.            Deliver Results
7.            Get Better
8.            Confront Reality
9.            Clarify Expectations
10.          Practice Accountability
11.          Listen First
12.          Keep Commitments
13.          Extend Trust

Let’s showcase a couple favorite citations by Covey. Companies often have the “meetings after the meetings” or the smaller meetings where the real discussion happens, and the real issues are aired (p. 143). This was also evident at ITT Fort Wayne in 2006, especially if one wished to surface the possibility of a repeated export violation!

Covey tells the story of Tom Peek, who sent a hand written thank-you note during a competitive real estate bid. The developer said that one act clinched the choice for him, and for Tom, sending the thank-you note was a natural thing to do (p. 154). This is probably my favorite form of non-financial appreciation, especially since most people only send thank you emails. They’re not the same.

Another gem: Elon Musk is quoted “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” (p. 187) Our commitment to [receiving] feedback is central to our Personal Leadership Philosophy and even more important is the habit of actively seeking self-improvement.

Most of us seem to be conflict avoiders, regardless how experienced. According to a Mercer study, only 39 percent of employees believe that senior management does a good job of confronting issues before they turn into major problems (p. 195). This fear is unnecessary. In truth, people respond to accountability – particularly the performers (p. 209). This is why After Action Reviews, when done properly, are so valuable.

Here's a gem for everyone nervous about delegating: Extending trust is about shifting from ‘trust’ as a noun to ‘trust’ as a verb (p. 230). Think delegation. As in a three-day Leadership Excellence Course, Covey recommends creation of a personal Action Plan for improved relationship trust.

Summary

Covey extends the thirteen trust behaviors beyond relationships to organizations, markets and interestingly, societal trust. The Principle of Contribution is a particularly noteworthy chapter, especially for anyone launching a new company and developing an authentic and unique brand.

Trust brings out the best in people and literally
changes the dynamics of interaction. (p. 333)

Coaching Story | Understanding What Really Energizes Us

We learn a lot about each other over three days in a Leadership Excellence Course (LEC). Beginning with our Energize2Lead Profiles, we learn what we like to do, what we believe people ought to do, and what really motivates us inside (instinctive needs). During a recent course, one of the attendees had a very independent, and high-energy profile. Both her preferred and instinctive colors were red and blue, indicative of someone who enjoys action and independence, and also one who needs this regularly in order to thrive.  Over the three days, surprise turned to genuine concern when the attendee revealed her energy level was low, and didn’t feel very motivated at work for some time. At the end of the course, when participants compose a follow-on Action Plan, she actually mentioned “Now I know why I need therapy.” Wow!

Fast forward to our first Zoom coaching session 16 October. It was powerful. The client took to heart the kind of work that is demotivating to her. The client also sought out support within her company  and enthusiastically informed me she is starting a new role 16 November, now only a few weeks away. She’s convinced that her new position will get her out of “maintenance mode,” which clearly she found de-energizing. 

We agreed to have our next coaching session just before Christmas break, allowing for an update on the new position. I’ll be keen on listening for more energy in her voice, and finally seeing the high energy independent leader originally expected in our October program. We still have plenty to work on, including leadership philosophy sharing and coaching/mentoring. It all starts with Understanding What Really Energizes You.

Influence & Insight | October 2023

Leadership Story | Leaders Adapt

We’ve read numerous articles about adopting in the Covid era. With many organizations struggling with “Return to Office” initiatives, perhaps it’s time to learn lessons from the Covid years. An After Action Review of sorts. If we ask What can we do differently? - a few ideas come to mind.

Focus on engagement. Mark Crowley’s Lead From the Heart offers a good start. Crowley posits that 67% of employ engagement may be traced to:

• Organizational Health
• Managerial Quality
• Extrinsic Rewards
• Workplace Readiness

An examination of organizational health seems in order.

Retire the concept of work/life balance. Dan Pontefract’s concept of Bloom, detailed in this month’s book review, offers an updated solution. We learned during Covid that working from home offers myriad new opportunities for workplace productivity in many cases that we never tried. It’s not as simple as one or the other, or a binary choice. Pontefract is perhaps most persuasive when reminding us that we may Bloom at different times in our lives, while sometimes we may be stunted, budding or in a renewal stage. 

Here’s a couple more ideas: How about a new metric for and subsequent focus on collaboration? We talk about collaboration, and the word retains intuitive appeal. Sure seems developing the idea of collaboration, which does not necessarily require face-to-face interaction, and measurable effects on productivity, are worth exploring. This is a natural extension of Lisette Sutherland’s Work Together Anywhere, penned prior to Covid.

On Jim Collins’ website, he comments extensively on Alignment, and the Academy Leadership team facilitates Aligning and Accomplishing Goals workshops. How about a new metric for alignment, and likewise attendant positive effects?

With Crowley, Pontefract, Sutherland, and the Academy Leadership team as starting points, we’re due for a post-Covid Cultural After Action Review.

Leaders Adapt.

Work-Life BLOOM | Book Review

“Will you become a positive force and assist
in your team member’s life-journey?” (p. 141)

Think of Dan Pontefract’s book as a well-researched post-pandemic challenge to the overused term work-life balance. Dan replaces work-life balance with six work factors and six life factors (p. 7):

Pontefract’s approach emphasizes core motivational and instinctive needs, a welcome improvement from mostly observing and evaluating day-to-day preferred work styles. In a way we may think of work-life balance as a management objective and blooming as a leadership objective.

This review introduces Pontefract’s replacement of work-life balance with the concept of BLOOM and offers supporting comments on his selected six work and six life factor definitions (in italics), as a path forward toward an improved work environment.

Landscape

In its 2022 State of the Global Workforce Report, Gallup reported that 60 percent of people are emotionally detached at work, and another 19 percent are miserable. Employee engagement numbers haven’t materially changed since Gallup began its global research in 2000 (p. 25). Sometimes we have to ask whether or not we are measuring the correct things.

Pontefract reflects that no one will ever remain highly engaged over their entire career (p. 14), challenging the idea of work-life balance as though a single equation and point of time may represent an approved solution. The author Haruki Murakami reinforces Pontefract in his 2007 book, After Dark, that work, and life are not a binary combination (p. 17).

Recall, Stanley McChrystal encountered a similar challenge describe in Team of Teams, while attempting to scale high performing elite military units. Interestingly, McChrystal concluding the role of a leader is ultimately that of a gardener. Pontefract and McChrystal have reached similar conclusions; McChrystal in battle overseas, Pontefract reflecting on our Covid years. Pontefract observes that the way many workers make a living is fundamentally changing, either by choice or out of necessity (p. 9), and that to bloom is to mature into realizing one’s potential (p. 16).

The elegant Work-Life Bloom model (p. 39) follows:

It’s a more human model, meant to capture our varying stages we naturally move between, appropriate for our modern, dynamic environment.

Work Factors (p. 57)

Trust: The demonstration of authentic and consistent behavior such that people become an advocate for one another. Imagine creating and then living your Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) – which is built on credibility and trust, with ever deepening roots.

Belonging: The accumulation of positive experiences that enables people to feel understood, represented, and safe. It’s easy imagining this factor suffered most during Covid, exposing our need for human connection, to be part of a thriving garden.

Valued: The belief that one is paid fairly, consistently recognized for their efforts, and frequently appreciated for their impacts. In Lead From The Heart, one of author Mark Crowley’s four listed factors leading to 67% of employee engagement is extrinsic rewards. Dan extends Crowley’s definition, primarily renumeration, by adding recognition and appreciation.

Purpose: The organization’s intentions, beliefs, and actions are geared toward serving all stakeholders and advancing society for the greater good. We need to walk the talk. We’ve all had and have witnessed phony bosses and leaders.

Strategy: The intended direction and related priorities to ensure the short- and long-term focus of team members and the delivery of their objectives. Our Covid years have likely exacerbated Strategic Execution challenges. In the Harvard Business Review’s Where Strategy Stumbles, we learn that when asked about commitments across functions and business units ... only 9% of managers say they can rely on colleagues in other functions and units all the time, and just half say they can rely on them most of the time. In other words, as a team leader, tending to more than one garden may be necessary.

Norms: The operating principles and guidelines that form the culture, providing clear expectations for team members regarding how to interact with one another. We can go further, and document our normative behavioral statements, codifying our organization’s enduring and unchanging values, and finally, model our values with our actions.

Life Factors (pp. 144-145)

Relationships: The community of strong and weak ties – your full network of connections – that facilitate a willing exchange of assistance. Let’s not limit connections to work or home. Rather than seeking transactions, seek mutual purpose and mutual support, the essence of genuine networking.

Skills: The attributes you develop and the aptitudes you gain to perform confidently at work and in life. Be the leader coach. Contrast this with the manager reluctantly offering an annual performance review. The better we understand all the dimensions of those on our team, the more we can support individuals both professionally and personally.

Well-being: The emotional, social, physical, and financial health of your present state. Similar to Tony Schwarz et. al. in The Power of Full Engagement. The authors challenge us to draw upon all four sources of our personal energy: Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

Meaning: The feeling and articulation of self-worth on a daily basis. Pontefract appropriately cites Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. A key takeaway from the timeless work is that even under the most daunting circumstances, we have a choice, or agency.

Agency: The ability to make decisions and take action that results in positive outcomes. Probably this reviewer’s favorite. Recall in Dan Pink’s Drive, we discovery that autonomy, mastery, and purpose fuel motivation. Not surprisingly this coincides with Frankl.

Respect: The expression of appreciation and admiration for [who you] really are. Not many generations ago, we esteemed masters of production efficiency such a Frederick Winslow Taylor. Much of our work today is mental and creative, rather than rote and mechanical. Connecting as people comes first.

Summary

Pontefract provides an excellent visual summary of Work & Life-Factors Soil Tests questions on pages 240-241, useful for any leader-coach.

I have learned during my time as a leader that no one
should take anything for granted. (p. 249)

Note: Dan Pontefract generously provided an advance reader’s copy of his book for review

Coaching Story | Leaders Solicit and Give Feedback

During a recent coaching session, a client eagerly wished to share progress over the past two months. He wanted to show me how he had applied use of the Johari Window:

My client applied the Johari Window in a service role for gaining useful shared knowledge about any capability, effort product, program or situation. Here’s one example: When we solicit feedback we shrink our blind spot and also the unknown quadrants. Likewise, when we offer feedback or share information, we shrink the hidden area (or facade) and unknown quadrants. My client prudently saw the unknown quadrant as an opportunity. In his model, he visually displays the unknown area as a core research area, a stakeholder research area, and a collaborative discovery area. Any combination of the three allows for knowledge to transfer from the unknown area to the open or known area — the arena.

The client went further offering the following information types as inputs to look through a Johari Max window process:

(used with permission from Outsider Arts Inc. 2023)

Wow! Easily the best application of a Johari Window I’ve experienced. Recall, one of the best traits of a coach is curiosity, especially when followed by knowledge-sharing.

Leaders Solicit and Give Feedback.

Influence & Insight | September 2023

Leadership Story | Cultivate Your Presence

In Carol Kinsey Goman’s Stand Out, she mentions “The most successful women I’ve worked with start by increasing their internal and external self-awareness.” Let’s explore a bit further - what does that mean?

We’re probably familiar with Power Cues, and Goman lists five:

• Standing or sitting tall
• Feet hip distance apart
• Head straight
• Shoulders back
• Expansive gestures

Keep in mind, all five power cues are non-verbal and may be utilized in any meeting or environment.

However, we may be less familiar with Empathy Cues, and Goman lists four:

• Smiles
• Positive Eye Contact
• Open palm gestures
• Undivided attention

What we want in the workplace today is a combination of both power cues and empathy cues. Notice that each of these cues are non-verbal, and that undivided attention requires listening rather than speaking.

Power cues are assertive, but they’re not bullying. In addition to verbally insulting, demeaning and embarrassing others, bullies also use body language to signal dismissal, disinterest, and exclusions.

While power cues are useful in any situation, empathy cues seem particularly valuable in the role of Leader as coach. 

How do you combine your power and empathy cues, and how do you modify them in different situations?

Leaders Cultivate Presence.

Stand Out | Book Review

Leadership presence is what people say about you
after you leave the room. (p. 2)

by Carol Kinsey Goman, is a worthy companion to Susan Packard’s New Rules of the Game, especially with her focus on Leadership Presence for Women. Consider beginning with the conclusion on page 227, a discussion about leading in a post-Covid environment.

This review segments primary takeaways from the five leadership quality chapters, body language & branding chapters, and the presence for women chapter.

Five C’s

Authentic Leadership Presence Begins with Your Values. (p. 13)

In Leader’s Compass workshops, we learn credibility and trust are the core of any leader’s reputation. Goman expands a bit, sharing five qualities of leadership presence. To stand out as a leader, you must be able to effectively display all five (credibility, confidence, composure, connection, and charisma) in combination with each other (p. 9). A most welcome addition, since we tend to overlook how our physical actions affect our leadership effectiveness. We can explore Goman’s five simple tips to increase our ability to project credibility, confidence, composure, connection, and charisma:

Credible communicators choose words that have the most impact

What do you want people to know, to feel and to do? (p. 23). Analogous to Aristotle’s logos, pathos & ethos rhetorical triad, Goman calls this the head, heart, and hands model. In addition to sharing expectations, how persuasive is our Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP)?

Confident leaders send nonverbal signals of power and authority

An abundance mindset offers a terrific starting point. A positive outlook has long been acknowledged to be a crucial part of high-level confidence (p. 51). One of the opposite, or scarcity mindset, habits we should break: Stop comparing yourself to others (p. 50).

Composed leaders display poise under pressure.

We should approach any Crucial Conversation with the single question “What Do I Really Want?” Goman similarly advises we begin by asking yourself what outcome you want and then decide what action you could take that would most likely achieve that goal (p. 73).

Goman has a wonderful perception of energy. Stress is basically a response, a flow of energy if you will (p. 79), and she highlights its useful form. “Eustress” is the term used to describe the positive level of stress that heightens productivity, creativity, and enjoyment of life (p.79). This offers an interesting question: “When in my instinctive, or high stress mode, what is a useful way to direct my energy?”

Leaders who Connect build strong, trusting business relationships.

Often, when discussing dominant yellow Energize2Lead (E2L) Profiles, we’re tempted to think of this trait superficially, perhaps as someone social or talkative.  The researchers discovered that when someone feels excluded, there is activity in the dorsal portion of the anterior cingulate cortex – the neural region involved in the “suffering” component of pain (p. 97).

A better way to think of a dominant yellow personality is one who wants to know that and how they fit in. Empathy helps you understand people’s unique needs and judge how to respond appropriately (p. 107).

Charismatic leaders use their unique brand of personal charm to attract others.

Goman’s definition of charisma is appealing I think of charisma as a flow of energy that attracts people to you like a magnet (p. 117). She offers twenty-six (A to Z) tips for collaborative, or connection-based charisma on pages 126-129.

The unquestioned authority of leaders in the past
has been replaced by the need to enlist
all team members as true partners. (p. 126)

Body Language & Brand

Goman lists three constants in how humans read and respond to body language (pp. 139-141):

• We look first for signs of danger.
• We need context.
• We mimic body language.

Our instinctive needs are essential for personal safety, and most of us need to know “the why” (dominant blue E2L personalities), and we frequently reciprocate when approached in accordance with our expectations.

Goman teaches us that creating your authentic brand begins with the answers to these six questions (p. 162):

• What makes you unique?
• What is your purpose?
• What are your goals?
• What’s your story?
• What are your greatest strengths?
• What are you most passionate about?

Two challenge questions: First, does your PLP answer at least two of the six questions? Second, how well, and how deeply, do you connect with others?

There is no more valuable commodity in
today’s business environment – and no more valuable skill –
than becoming a master networker (p. 170).

Goman asks us to think about networking deeply, perhaps searching for common purpose to start. The best networkers I know spend most of their time looking for some way to be of assistance to the other person (p. 170).

Leadership Presence for Women

According to a recent study by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, women are more effective than men in leadership competencies such as taking initiative, acting with resilience, practicing self-development, driving for results, and displaying high integrity and honesty (p. 178). The findings seem to suggest that our modern workplace has yet to embrace this increasingly relevant combination of skills and traits.

An interesting question: When to use which particular skill? Goman reflects that the most successful women I’ve worked with start by increasing their internal and external awareness (p. 181). Further, research at Stanford University Graduate School of Business also shows that women who are assertive and confident, but who can turn these traits on and off depending on the social circumstances, get more promotions than other women, or even than men (p. 181).

Sometimes women hold themselves back though, and years of performance coaching affirm Goman’s finding that women rarely attempt something unless they feel 100 percent certain they can achieve it; men typically only have to feel 60 percent certain (p. 183).

A great list of eighteen feminine leadership skills is shared on page 197: a few favorites:

• Feminine leaders make sure everyone on their team has a voice.
• Feminine leaders share information.
• Feminine leaders create psychological safety. 

Summary

Our leadership philosophy is at the core of our presence:

To help your organization (or department of team) manage the
difficulties of change, you need to inspire and motivate
them with a powerful vision of the future (p. 228).

Note: Dr. Goman generously provided a copy of her book for review.

Coaching Story | Leaders Seek Mutual Purpose

Situation: An originally scheduled Zoom coaching session turned phone call with a business owner/CEO driving to a work site. Urgent Matter: An ongoing conflict between two valued team members. At first, postposing our originally scheduled coaching session & agenda seemed a prudent idea until the CEO asked: “Can we address this particular situation and help me prepare for the meeting?” Great idea for our coaching session.

When this CEO enrolled in our three-day Leadership Excellence Course, completed a few weeks before, the following desired areas of improvement were listed:

• Slowing down to speed up
• Being more strategic when planning
• Improve critical thinking

Keeping these improvement areas in mind, a summary or strategic perspective of the book Crucial Conversations seemed a good approach. One of the easiest ways to think about a a crucial conversation is that Mutual Purpose is required to start the conversation and Mutual Respect is required to maintain it. Since the CEO wasn’t able to take notes, he repeated the two requirements every few minutes while providing background on the current conflict. We finished the coaching call before the CEO reached his meeting site, and he was confident he had memorized Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect. Curious about the outcome of his meeting, I welcomed a simple follow-on text message, especially if a positive outcome had been achieved. 

A few hours later, the following text appeared: “Best conflict meeting between two I ever held doing this,” accompanied by a single page picture. In the middle of the page was a “Mutual Purpose” title, and underneath the following: 

Create opportunities for others. Provide for my family $$. Helping team find strengths, to improve their income full circle to benefit team & business. Organized & structured environment “Creative aspect opportunity,” drives me. Sharing talent to those receptive to learning. An oval captured the mutual purpose statement.

Surrounding the mutual purpose statement were sets of “Dialogue Bullets” to and from the parties in conflict — a form of feedback to each other describing strong traits and areas for improvement. Amazingly, this was all captured on a single page. 

It was apparent examining the page that the CEO indeed slowed down and took a coaching approach, and treated the conflict as a learning opportunity for all. Genuine collaboration. Now everyone understands the big picture and has a plan for improved communication. Can’t wait to see what happens during our next coaching session!

Leaders Seek Mutual Purpose.

Influence & Insight | August 2023

Leadership Story | Listen to Your Team

One of the best examples of crossing the Knowing-Doing Gap is when new CEO Harvey Parker made long overdue changes at the New Zealand Post. What did Parker do? He asked the myriad drivers that canvased wide territories what could be done to reduce operating losses. The drivers knew that charging for packages by weight would always yield unpredictable results, while standardizing packaging (fixed rate postage) would allow predictable financial results whether packages were on a truck or aircraft. Brilliant. An amazing turnaround followed.

On day three of a recent Leadership Excellence Course, all eleven participants read their final draft Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) aloud. Consider the diverse range of professionals in our course:

• A restaurant and hospitality CEO founder
• Four attendees from a family owned, 3PL (Third-party Logistics) company
• Three attendees from the local zoo
• A project manager newly empowered after leaving a big company and joining a small woman owned business
• An entrepreneur veteran looking for ways to continuously serve rather than retire after a military career
• A military officer & corporate  executive in pursuit of a fulfilling new career

While listening to these powerful PLPs, some bringing tears to the group, I wished the leaders of the Fortune 500 were present witnessing this remarkable group. Seems that many corporate leaders are managers in leader roles, or with leader titles. This group spoke from the heart, sharing how their goal is to unify their teams like a family, driven by empathy and focusing on people and each other in order to achieve an amazing future. It will be an honor listening to their progress over the years and they continue transforming their organizations.

Leaders Listen to Their Team

Switch | Book Review

Book of the year (belated award).

Managers initially focus on strategy, culture, or systems,
which leads to miss the important issue – [that] the core of the
matter is always about changing the behavior of people. (p. 105)

Chip and Dan Heath’s 2010 work is a timeless guide for the manager struggling with individual or team performance. “Is this an ability issue or a motivation issue?” remains a useful root cause question. The Heaths reach a similar conclusion: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem (p. 3). Imagine the situation problem as a reflection of the motivational environment we create in a leader role.

Think of our Energize2Lead (E2L) instinctive needs, or things that make us feel safe, secure, energizing our core. Successful changes share a common pattern. They require the leader of the change to do three things at once: You’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds (p. 5). So, we need to go further than just addressing the climate we create. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt says that our emotional side is an Elephant, and our rational side is its Rider (p. 7).

This model forms the three sections of the book, Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant, and Shape the Path. The authors diagram this model on page 259, suitable as a useful poster.

Direct The Rider

In the age of the World Wide Web, infinite data and information are ubiquitous. Our first instinct, in most change situations, is to offer up data to people’s Riders: Here’s why we need to change. Here are the tables and charts that prove it (p. 81). It’s a natural and very appealing approach, especially for the technically oriented. Making things worse, we seem wired to focus on the negative (p. 46).

What to do? The more successful change transformations were more likely to set behavioral goals (p. 62). Recall Kouzes and Posner advise us first to Model the Way, allowing the rational rider glimpses of the desired behavior. The Heaths found that solutions-focused therapists learn to focus their patients on the first hints of the miracle – “What’s the first small sign you’d see that would make you think the problem was gone?” (p. 37). We can do the same in a coaching role, challenging others to provide an incremental first goal. We want what we might call a destination postcard (p. 76), a terrific leadership toolbox addition.  Imagine having a destination postcard as an opening “Where are you taking us?” statement in a Personal Leadership Philosophy. This sets up well for goal alignment or marrying your long-term goal with short-term critical moves (p. 93).

Motivate the Elephant

Kotter and Cohen say that most change happens in this order: ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE (p. 106), rather than SEE-FEEL-CHANGE. Elephants aren’t motivated by data and charts.  It’s emotion that motivates the Elephant (p. 118).

Further, James March says that when people make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of decision making: the consequences model or the identity model (p. 153). Let’s think of the consequences or compliance model as the domain of the manager and the identity model as the domain of the leader.

Remember the destination postcard. An effective leader should continually refer to the postcard, or future vision of the organization. In the identity model, we essentially ask ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation? (p. 153). This approach may allow the typical technical Subject Matter Expert (SME) an Aha Moment – now motivated by an identity greater than self. Consider the opposite. Any change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure (p. 154).

Shape the Path

Let’s return to the leader’s role in creating a motivational environment. Years of coaching worldwide suggest ability issues are far less common than motivation or instinctive needs issues. The Heaths go further: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem (p. 192). In one study of people making changes in their lives, 36 percent of the successful changes were associated with a move to a new location, and only 13 percent of unsuccessful changes involved a move (p. 208).

With many just returning to the office post-Covid, an opportunity has emerged. Since people are incredibly sensitive to the environment and the culture (p. 206), we should ask how we may change our workplace beforehand. A change leader thinks, “How can I set up a situation that brings out the good in these people.” (p. 220). One effective idea is an “action trigger,” or making the decision to execute a certain positive action when encountering a certain situational trigger. Imagine having daily or weekly meetings highlighting progress toward behavioral goals and the team destination postcard. As the change leader, you have to pay close attention to social signals, because they can either guarantee a change effort or doom it (p. 228). Look for the influencers and support them. If you want to change the culture of your organizations, you’ve got to get the reformers together. They need a free space. They need time to coordinate outside the gaze of the resisters (p. 247).

Summary

Alignment is an essential leader activity. In other words,

When change works, it’s because the Rider, the Elephant,
and the Path are all aligned in support of the switch (p. 255).

Seven clinics in the three sections additionally serve as relevant case studies implementing an effective switch. “Next Steps” resources at the end of the book including podcasts may be found at heathbrothers.com.

Coaching Story | Leaders Create Engagement

Coaching session with Subject Matter Expert (SME), assigned to multiple programs. 

Often helps programs that are behind.

Here’s the interesting part: 30% of the time it’s an urgent schedule environment and the client “just does it,” or fixes the critical issue. Which means majority of the time, or in 70% of the situations, the client provides a learning/teaching environment. What a great example of leader as coach.

In a recent coaching session with a very bright Subject Matter Expert (SME), assigned to multiple programs, the client shared he’s often assigned to programs that are behind. Here’s the interesting part: 30% of the time it’s an urgent schedule environment and the client “just does it,” or fixes the critical issue. Which means majority of the time, or in 70% of the situations, the client provides a learning/teaching environment. What a great example of leader as coach.

It’s worth taking a look at Whitney Johnson’s Learning S-Curve from Build An A Team

Our SME client clearly occupies the Mastery portion of the graph, as shown on the right. However, recall that Whitney Johnson describes an A Team, or a highly engaged team, as one where 70% of the team members are in the middle, or Engagement portion of the graph, and only 15% the Inexperience or Mastery regions. Imagine a new team member just crossing the boundary from the Inexperience to the Engagement section. A good leader coach will provide opportunity, training and coaching allowing confidence, energy and productivity to soar. Let’s not forget the role of the SME in the Mastery zone. If part of the SME’s role is transferring knowledge, training and coaching, this will further reinforce overall engagement for the 70% majority of the team. 

How many times do we overextend our experts, masters of their field, rather than prioritize their role as leader teachers? Or allow a genuine SME to believe they are the only one who perform certain tasks? 

Recall decades of Gallup surveys show engagement in the workforce hovering about 30%, that’s all. Whitney Johnson provides a model for high engagement, or an A Team. My client reminded us this month that as masters we can support others and perhaps increase engagement to new levels.

Leaders Create Engagement.

Influence & Insight | July 2023

Leadership Story | Leaders Develop Others

How do I ask for my next promotion to a higher leadership level? Good question. Here’s another way to approach such a situation: Demonstrate increased performance and results by operating at a higher leadership level, and then ask your supervisor (who may be too busy to notice what you’ve done) “What’s the best thing to do now?” In the first situation, in a meeting with her supervisor, the client was fully prepared for the meeting, but the supervisor was not. The client had prepared development plans for everyone on her team, and was eager to inform her supervisor, who had previously rated her low on leading change (360 evaluation). We agreed during our coaching session, a more assertive, or collaborative communication approach should help. If the boss is busy, fine. Don’t wait to share information demonstrating your commitment to develop and support others. Share the information before the meeting and then use the meeting to discuss what you’ve done.

In the second instance, the client has successfully transitioned from a managerial role into a leader role the past couple years. The client’s two immediate supervisors, similar to the first example, don’t have day-to-visibility, perhaps exacerbated due to the Covid environment. The client also has several exceptional talents ready for increased leadership responsibilities. Our last coaching session revealed likely misalignment with the client’s supervisors, who may believe there’s plenty of time available before promoting the client. It’s not a big alignment issue, but does appear to increase risk of losing excellence prospects already in the “leadership pipeline.”  Developing an effective leadership pipeline, while reducing employee turnover, is an excellent demonstration of leadership growth, rather than asking for more money or a bigger title. The client will continue developing his talent pipeline, inform his supervisors, and recommend that the three align the overall talent pipeline. Nice approach.

Leaders develop others.

Lead From The Heart | Book Review

The studies prove that our traditional leadership model has reached
the end of its effectiveness. Workers across the country have grown
widely disengaged and disheartened, and American productivity is
being greatly undermined as a result (p.11).

Mark Crowley courageously explores root causes of obviously outdated leadership models, with convincing demographic research and proposes we rethink and reapply ourselves. His journey transcends science leading to our physical hearts, not just as a source of emotional connection, but as a unifying energy source. Crowley offers a four-part antidote we should all wisely incorporate within our Personal Leadership Philosophy.

Our Toxic Leadership Environment

Alex Edmans, Wharton Finance Professor, finds contemporary leaders still attempt to (p. 1) "squeeze as much out of [employees] as possible and pay them as little as possible." reminiscent of Winslow Taylor's (see Team of Teams) legacy of treating employees as subhuman machinery parts to be utilized for maximum efficiency. Crowley realized our worst mistake is that we compromise our foundational and fundamental values ... believing efficiency alone will make our enterprises more productive and profitable (p. 52).

Crowley references Maslow (pp. 1-2) noting that with our basic needs mostly satisfied via our careers, higher level needs for things like respect, recognition and even fulfillment in the workplace have become much more important (p. 3), hinting at affinity with Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene theory. Or, put another way, what's really happened is that people have ascended in their needs and have landed on work as the place to fulfill them (p. 4).

Professor Ioannis Theodossiou, University of Aberdeen agrees:  "I suppose that if one spends roughly two-thirds of his or her life at work, satisfaction with life will be heavily dependent upon job satisfaction." Patricia Aburdene, in Megatrends 2010, goes further, predicting "The Power of Spirituality" will be the greatest megatrend of our current era (p. 8).

What does that mean for us as leaders? These findings place a premium on knowing instinctive needs (within our Energize2Lead Profile), of ourselves, and especially of those we serve.

Crowley references the Conference Board of New York's survey from 1987 to 2009, citing an alarming twenty-two consecutive years of declines in worker happiness (p. 11). It is clear the "employment deal" -- or what may also be called a social contract -- [requires] emotional connections gained through things like fairness, career development and seeing how their work fits into the bigger picture of the organization (p. 13). How much does our leadership philosophy address these factors - or engagement?

Engagement is more complex. It takes into consideration these same cognitive connections that people have with their jobs in addition to two other components: Emotional attachments to work, and behavioral responses to those attachments (p. 17). Crowley finds just four "drivers" explain 67% of the overall movement of employee engagement: Organizational Health, Managerial Quality, Extrinsic Rewards and Workplace Readiness and that these results are consistent across the world (p. 21).

John Gibbons (Conference Board) summarizes (p. 24): "It's critical that they know they are part of something bigger than themselves." It's a form of love, reminding us of Joel Manby's Love Works and agape love. Companies are [now] proving the effects of a much more sustainable and effective leadership model. A model which ensures all constituencies win and that creates prosperity, in the grandest sense, for all (p. 35).

Crowley goes deep in Chapter 4, Engagement is a Decision of the Heart, the soul of this book. Gary Zukav, author of The Dancing Wu Li Masters, frames the root cause: Religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind (p. 55). Dr. Mimi Guarneri challenges this distinction in The Heart Speaks: A Cardiologist Reveals The Secret of Healing, concluding what people feel in their hearts has tremendous influence over their motivation and performance in the workplace. The human heart is the driving force of human achievement (p. 41). To Dr. Paul Pearsall the brain makes us individualistic -- focused on our own achievements -- while the heart needs interrelationship and connection (p. 42). Dr. Pearsall indicates the heart has the amazing ability of accurately detecting the nature of energy coming from another's heart and people cannot be fooled by false or unsupportive intentions (p. 48). Similarly, Bruce Creyer, co-founder of the Institute of HeartMath, shares we have learned that the heart is creating an energetic field & science is coming around to validate this (p. 54).

The Leadership Antitoxins

Crowley's prescribes four antitoxins (p. 60) for our downward leadership spiral:

Hire People with Heart                   Build A Highly Engaged Team
Heart to Heart                                Connect On A Personal Level
Empower the Heart                        Maximize Employee Potential
Inspire the Heart                            Value and Honor Achievements

Academy Leadership's Energize2Lead, Feedback, Motivation and Coaching workshops correlate to each of these antidotes, respectively.

For practical application, Crowley offers eight steps in hiring (pp. 66-75):

• Define and Be Absolutely Clear On What Talent You Need
• Always Seek To Improve the Strength and Talent on Your Team
• Look For Evidence of Ambition and Winning Ways
• Interview With Purpose
• Involve Your Team In The Selection Process
• Obtain Job Samples
• Before You Make an Offer, Five Finalists a Clear, Thorough and Honest Summary of Your Expectations and Job Duties
• Listen To Your Heart When Making a Hiring Decision

In a way, leadership is a calling.  Peter Senge (p. 77) pronounces that to be effective today, the leader shoulders an almost sacred responsibility to create conditions that enable people to have happy and productive lives.

Here's how Crowley suggests we connect on a personal level (pp. 81-91):

• Clarify Your Motivations And Intentions For Holding One-On-One Meetings
• Launch The Discussion By Expressing Gratitude For Having Them On Your Team
• Stick To The Agenda And Focus On Your Employee
• Discover Their Dreams and Aspirations
• Demonstrate Your Intent To Grow Them And Develop A Plan
• Use The Discussions to Grow Your Own Leadership Effectiveness 

According to Covey, [leadership requires] an abundance mentality, leaders inherently must have a deep inner sense of personal worth, self-confidence and security. Building on this, Crowley insists feeling valued is essential to the well-being of all people and to the spirit which motivates performance (p. 122), leading to five recognition habits:

• Give Recognition Only When Its Earned
• Never Ration Recognition When It Is Earned
• Ensure All Recognition Is Genuine And Sincere
• Institutionalize Recognition
• Encourage People 

Closing

Coming full circle, the word "encourage" dates back to the fourteenth century and, not surprisingly, means "to give heart" to people (p. 131). That is our leadership challenge.

Thank you Mark for the signed copy of your book.

Coaching Story | Coaching Matters

Take a look at this recent email:

“I wanted to thank you for the work you invested in the class, but more than that I wanted to thank you for the time you invested in me.  I really learned a lot about my and am trying to make sure I maintain the moment I gained.  

When I went to your class I was concerned my work place was a place I could not succeed at.  It really bothered me because my previous work place was the first in my life that I was not able to succeed at.  One of my co-workers asked me why I had stayed in that environment for as long as I had when it was obvious I could not succeed.  I told her that I had always previously conquered all my issues before I left and I hated leaving a loser.  It was really eating at me, but I know now that part of my problem has been habits I picked up in that environment.  I have really good ideas now and I think I understand what my managers have been asking. 

I really need those 3 coaching sessions because what I plan to do over the next 6 months is going to transformative for me and my company.  I can’t do it on my own and I am going to lose momentum without a good support group.”

Sometimes we don’t really know just what is going on in someone’s career or life until they reach out. Since this email the client and I have had a very positive and energizing first coaching session. Turns out the client has already shared their personal leadership philosophy (PLP), and has received positive feedback. Specifically, the client’s supervisor mentioned that a PLP allows an active, rather than passive position. Just what the client needs in a turbulent environment, a reminder that good leaders have a bias for action and don’t wait to do the right thing.

The client is also introducing an accountability award, promoting deeper and more trusting team formation. Wonderful.

Since the client has been in a rapidly changing environment we agreed reviewing the book Switch is also a good idea.

Can’t wait for our next coaching session.

Leaders coach and coaching matters.

Influence & Insight | June 2023

Leadership Story |  Leaders Set Expectations 

We often read business articles in publications such as the Wall Street Journal about an incoming CEO making drastic organizational changes upon arrival. Frequently these articles seem to portray the CEO as a heartless executive eager to axe a prior team. Recent coaching sessions with a company president offer an opportunity for viewing such a situation through the eyes of the incoming executive.

In our example, the incoming president encountered a most unusual organizational structure, in particular, the Chief Information Officer, or CIO’s direct report team. In addition to the typical functions reporting to the CIO, such as Information Technology, the Program Management Office (PMO) director and the Vice President of Information Technology Security reported to the CIO. Not surprisingly, the CIO believed these unique responsibilities were qualification for, if not an expectation for, promotion to CEO. The incoming CEO, who had nothing to do with this organization structure, inherited both a disgruntled CIO who obviously didn’t get the promotion, and an unusual structure calling for immediate changes.

Not surprisingly, the PMO director will be reporting directly to the CEO and the Vice-President of Information Technology Security will be reporting to the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). To an outsider two executive positions changes may appear abrupt, but such changes are often a reflection of legacy organizational structures an incoming CEO had nothing to do with.

Recall, leaders set their expectations not just through organizational structure charts, but through a well composed Personal Leadership Philosophy.

Leaders Set Expectations.

Turning Small Talk into Big Talk | Book Review

You should never go into a discussion
trying to educate someone else. (p. 138)

Celeste Headlee’s terrific quote offers great advice for effective coaching, a powerful application of Jan Janura’s recent work for those interested in transforming conversations and relationships beyond the superficial toward meeting our deepest internal motivational needs.

Unfortunately, most conversations today are transactional. They serve as a means to an end – as a way of requesting and dispensing information (p. 27). Likewise, this is likely why we detest meetings so much. By replacing a transactional mindset with a curious and interested one, we can learn a great deal. Ask the right questions and people will actually talk about everything that is on their hearts and in their heads (forward by Hugh Hewitt).

Janura recalls Doug Coe speaking about covenant relationships, a partnership in which two parties make binding promises to each other and work together to reach a common goal (p. 19). This is a terrific term we should consider using at the beginning of a coaching relationship reminiscent of Christine Comaford’s focus on making promises or commitments for breakthrough change.

This review recommends Janura’s approach as another way for leaders to think about, and continuously improve performance coaching sessions.

Intentional Questions

Janura shares the word intentionality, the act of being deliberate or purposeful on page 43. It’s a great new term for us, somewhat like Anders Ericsson’s deliberate practice. Being deliberate or intentional with conversations or coaching is quite the opposite of the trivial, driven by curiosity, discovery, and improvement.

Over the three days of an Academy Leadership Excellence Course, we discuss passive, active and trigger questions. Janura’s description of closed ended questions, which allows participants to simply answer yes or no (p. 64) are essentially, passive questions. Janura calls open-ended questions conversation starters (p. 73), akin to active questions.

Our goal is Janura’s description of table questions, or a way of managing a conversation and moving it in the direction you want it to go (p. 47), the equivalent of trigger questions. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that [trigger] other persons will [to] enjoy answering (p. 74). The best table, or trigger, questions should allow guests multiple options to explore, engage, and share their stories (p. 80). Of course, with this level of sharing the best action for a host (or coach) is active listening.

Preparation

Janura offer guidelines (p. 51) for setting up table questions.

1.   Plan ahead.
2.   Ask the right questions.
3.   Be in control.
4.   MAKE IT FUN.

Imagine training an athlete. Without a plan, measured results, evaluation and feedback, performance improvements invariably stall. Same thing with coaching. A productive coaching session may or not be fun, but it should be ENERGIZING.

As host or coach, you can expect a little trouble. And sometimes it’s a lot of trouble (p. 117). Maybe we don’t know the individual well. For example, being an introvert just means that you prefer socializing differently than extroverts (p. 128). During our Energize2Lead (E2L) workshops, we may describe the dominant green/blue color combination information processors, perhaps more descriptive than the label introvert.

Let’s say you’ve tried everything. Someone still won’t speak up. Here’s exactly what you should do in that situation. Nothing (p. 133). Janura is right. As a coach we should ask our questions, affording our audience time to process and share. Being patient may take some practice before it’s perfected, but you only stand to gain from making it a virtue (p. 154).

Application

Chapter 9, Lead by Listening, is the heart of the book, and a call for active listening. Janura cites Jessica Hagy: 

“Listening is a key way to not only take interesting
information that you can share later, but to make
other people feel interesting themselves. To coax people
out of shyness, just keep asking them questions.” (p. 169)

We seem to suffer from a need to fill empty (quiet) conversational space today. Silences aren’t as long as you think they are (p. 169), according to Bernardo J. Carducci, Ph.D. Rather than speaking rather than listening, observe the environment. Janura includes nine techniques from The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help – or Hurt – How You Lead (p. 172). A favorite: Mirroring another person’s gestures and posture -- a terrific example.

Chapters 10-11 offer several sets of table questions and serve as an excellent reference.

Summary

Ximena Vengochea, Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection, captures the essence of executive coaching:

“Staying present is essential for empathic listening to occur, the kind
of listening where we are able to connect beyond the superficial, to a
deeper, more meaningful, emotional level with others. (p. 170)

 Janura provides a useful web site with additional resources:

www.TurningSmallTalkIntoBigTalk.com

Coaching Story | Return to Office Tips

A couple gems worth sharing from recent client coaching sessions. Perhaps in response to our Setting Leadership Priorities workshop, one client has started blocking out “Quality Planning Time” every day. In addition, his office is testing out some “busy lights,” try visualizing a light stalk accompanied by a speaker whereby:

Green means available
Yellow means I’ve stepped away
Red means I’m in a meeting
Purple means do not disturb me

Think about the purple light. It’s really saying “I’m here, but I’m focused on my prioritized work and really don’t appreciate interruptions now.” Fantastic. Another client already using busy lights also has white noise generators in the ceilings that transmit downward greatly dampening unwanted sounds in an open area (cubicle) work enviroment.

Another client is applying her increased knowledge of Energize2Lead (E2L) profiles toward improved team performance. After a recent E2L workshop she challenged every team member to really dig into their profiles & talk more about it during a follow up meeting. Some were silent, some were combative! - probably confirming their profile accuracy unintentionally. Since this group travels a lot together on behalf of their client, understanding motivational (or instinctive) needs will help a great deal, especially when not in “job” mode. Let’s see what happens, especially since the client was hired to fix this team - suffering from high turnover.

Leaders use Return to Office Tips.

Influence & Insight | May 2023

Leadership Story |  Leaders Listen

During Academy Leadership Excellence Courses (LECs), it’s helpful introducing a question quality spectrum: On one end are passive questions, usually answerable by a simple yes or no, likely provoking no thought or engagement. On the other end are trigger questions, especially beneficial when we know the individual well, that trigger deeper thought and engagement leading to increased relational capacity.

Jan Janura has written a terrific new book, Turning Small Talk into Big Talk. It’s not a coaching book, it’s a life book. Jan wants to trigger or challenge us, into launching more meaningful discussions. He lets us know that according to Ximena Venogoechea, author of Listen Like You Mean It: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection, creating a listening mindset requires using empathy, curiosity, and humility. All worthy leadership values. Venogoechea also writes that “staying present is essential for empathic listening to occur, the kind of listening where we are able to connect beyond the superficial, to a deeper, more meaningful, emotional level with others.”

These are wonderful lifetimes habits worth developing, and it’s an ideal way to grow as a leader coach. Let’s become better listeners, coaches, and people.

Leaders listen.

What Millennials Want From Work | Book Review

Millennials’ expectations about work are strikingly similar to those
of other generations. In many cases, Millennials are continuing a
decades-long tradition of pushing organizations to change. (p. 8)

Jennifer Deal and Alec Levenson, in a follow up to Deal’s 2007 Retiring the Generation GAP, reaffirm that our perceptions of Millennials (people born between 1980 and 2000), rather than reality, remain a challenge.

Fundamentally, Millennials want what older generations have always wanted: an interesting job that pays well, where they work with people they like and trust, have access to development and the opportunity to advance, are shown appreciation on a regular basis, and don’t have to leave. They are focused on three key areas (p. 9):

• The people
• The work
• The opportunities

This review posits that developing a genuine “Coaching & Connecting” culture is the single best action for creating a win-win environment for Millennials, along with challenging legacy processes and fostering an environment of trust. 

Coaching & Connecting

We are living in an age of continuous access to information worldwide and a time when communication and feedback are instantaneous. It should be no surprise that Millennials bring these expectations to the workplace. It is consistent with Millennials’ experience because many of them have grown up in a world where they received frequent feedback about how they were doing (p. 53).

A recurring discovery in Academy Leadership programs is organizational confusion between evaluation and coaching. Let’s use the definition of Performance Coaching in our Coaching to Develop Leaders workshops:

Performance Coaching is the process of equipping people with
the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need
to develop themselves and become more successful.

Millennials seem to genuinely want and expect this type of coaching. The lack of time for on-the-job development contributes to Millennials perception that the organization is treating them as independent agents, not as valued contributors (p. 151).    

One of the author’s key findings is that Millennials are highly intrinsically motivated (p. 31). They also would prefer to receive feedback about their performance or their compensation face-to-face (p. 105). The best coaching relationships become two-way over time, a result of increasing relational capacity. Millennials seem to instinctively want this and likewise believe they should be able to say what they think (p. 35).

Part of the role of a leader is to make a connection with others. That’s not enough today since we’re now in a globally connected workplace. Organizations need to structure the workplace environment so Millennials can develop friendships with coworkers and have positive relationships with mentors, team members, and their boss (p. 172). 

Challenge the Process

Millennials are both observant and skeptical. About a third of Millennials don’t think they can make use of organizationally sponsored work-life programs or make choices that are in their best interest without substantial negative repercussions for their careers (p. 18). Leaders should be asking where that perception comes from.

In our Academy Leadership Energize2Lead (E2L) workshops, we learn that most of us don’t want to be told what, when and how to do things (yellow, blue expectations profile). Millennials seem more candid than prior generations. Millennials are willing to and do work long hours, but they don’t believe that spending a lot of time in the office indicates they are working hard (p. 15). Time cards measure time, that’s all, and Millennials know that. Nor do they don’t accept a manufacturing mindset that says that it will take a precise amount of time before they have learned everything they need to learn in that position (p. 152).

Millennials are provoking organizations to develop more meaningful metrics. Millennials think that autonomy and flexibility mean working where and when they want to, they can meet their personal needs – as long as they are being productive (p. 64). This is very similar to Lisette Sutherland’s findings in Work together Anywhere. Three years of Covid pandemic experiences have only exacerbated these observations.

Cultivate Trust

Credibility and trust are central to any developing leader, highlighted in our Leader’s Compass workshops. Trust is a critical part of the workplace, but Millennials don’t have unwavering trust in the people above them in the organization (p. 59). Again, leaders should be asking -- why? Does the organization say one thing and do another? At the same time [Millennials] are split on the question of whether the company is really focused on helping the community or is more interested in the good PR the organization can get from it (p. 78).

This is likely at the heart of retention issues. Millennials who don’t have an emotional connection to their organization will seek it elsewhere (p. 117). Making things worse, a large minority of Millennials do not think that their bosses care about their well-being, and more than a quarter don’t feel that their supervisors are supportive (p. 123).

Summary

Altogether, Deal and Levenson’s findings may be summarized in three primary goals for a Millennial talent management strategy (p. 169):

• The people (friends and mentors, team, and boss)
• The work (interesting, meaningful, and balanced)
• Opportunities (feedback and communication, development, and pay) 

Millennials will leave if their needs aren’t met. (p. 199)

Coaching Story | Executive Coaching Matters

A wave of coaching engagements arrived just this past six weeks. One is with the president of a financial institution, one is with a county government Chief Information Officer (CIO), and one is with a senior technology manager. The optimist says individual improvement is the goal, the cynic says each were told to find an executive coach (an evaluation?) but maybe there is a third option. Perhaps three years of our Covid pandemic has given us time to think about what works, what doesn’t work, and perhaps unexpectedly, created an environment where we’re questioning things more, and asking What Can I Do To Make Things Better?

In the first case, the president spent the first year aligning with the organizational culture and delivering financial results. Now it’s time to unify and develop the team. In the second case, the CIO is quickly hiring to reach full staffing levels for the first time in years, and wishes to energize the team by creating a motivational environment driven by the hearts of public servants. The third case is a relatively new supervisor who has figured out that a competitive organization cannot thrive without investing in and supporting their highly technical teams. 

We seem to be entering an era receptive to coaching, embracing the idea that focusing on people in addition to results may yield a more engaged workforce, and perhaps lead to a competitive advantage. It’s wonderful.

Executive Coaching Matters.

Influence & Insight | April 2023

Leadership Story |  Thoughts | 100 Stories

For our 100th Choinque Newsletter it seems worthwhile sharing a few lasting leadership impressions. Here are three.

“[A laborer] shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type… the workman who is best suited to handling pig iron is unable to understand the real science of doing this class of work. He is so stupid that the word “percentage” has no meaning to him, and he must consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than himself into the habit of working in accordance with the laws of science before he can be successful.” 

This quote by Frederick Winslow Taylor, cited in Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams has left a lasting impression. It serves as a reminder that many of our management practices treat people like animals with a focus on efficiency often relegating us to simple gears in a machine. These lasting management practices are founded on science and are certainly measurable, and so many years later, still surround us. Leadership requires a different mindset.

It’s a good thing to wonder why people choose to do what they do, and by extension, organizations. That’s a central component of The Knowing-Doing Gap, getting beyond superficial observations and treating the pursuit of knowledge, or curiosity, as a noble human pursuit. We humans are unique in that we can speak to each other, and have the capacity to share virtually unlimited knowledge in the internet age. Despite this, we still often fear doing the right thing. Why?

Over these past eight years, embracing an abundance mindset, and resisting a scarcity mindset increasingly come to mind. We can apply an abundance mindset at the personal level, at the organizational level, and at the highest levels of governance. An abundance mindset fuels us with gratitude, perhaps the most essential energy source for a leader. 

Thoughts | 100 Stories.

Buy Back Your Time | Book Review

Many of the opportunities you have in life are generated by the
energy you create around you. (p. 133)

Dan Martell delivers indispensable advice to any company founder seeking successful growth and, in the process, offers valuable techniques for any leader. The basis for the book: The little-known secret to reaching the next stage of your business is spending time on only the tasks that (p. 4):

a)   You excel at.
b)   You truly enjoy.
c)   Add the highest value. 

This review focuses on three recommended activities related to Academy Leadership Excellence Course (LEC) workshops we may immediately put to work.

Prioritize

Although tempting to adrenaline junkies, simple busyness can’t be the secret ingredient to business success (p. 3). Martell offers a fantastic solution for the delegation challenged:

The Buyback Principle: Don’t hire to grow
your business. Hire to buy back your time. (p. 6) 

He offers a list of favorite excuses for not acting. As a typical manager (p. 14), you think:

• I don’t have the time.
• I can’t afford the help.
• No one’s as good at the work as I am.
• No one wants to do the work.
• I can’t find good people to hire. 

Each of the five excuses might be heard during any Setting Leadership Priorities workshop, especially when justifying low self-evaluation scores. During these workshops, we identify High Payoff Activities (HPAs) and Low Payoff Activities (LPAs) using the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule. Martell introduces The DRIP Matrix (p. 30) emphasizing that the more time spent in our Production Quadrant the more our business will grow successfully.

Let’s examine two ways we may immediately put the matrix to work. First, the Delegation Quadrant contains tasks that we need to get rid of ASAP (p. 32). For many of us, this may be routine work better suited for a more junior person new to the business, or best handled by an administrative assistant. An even better approach, when delegating, is selecting someone who places the task in their production quadrant.

Second, let’s align the Investment Quadrant (on the left) with the Important but Not Urgent Quadrant (on the right) as shown in Academy Leadership’s adaptation of Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. Typically tasks in the Investment Quadrant fall into these categories (pp. 34-35):

• Physical activities
• Time with others
• Hobbies
• Industry collaborations
• Personal and professional development 

We’re not looking for an immediate Return on Investment (ROI) with these activities, and their results may not be readily measurable. The goal is to always have some activities in the Investment Quadrant that nourish your soul, your relationships, and flex your creativity (p. 35).

Martell shares Five Time Assassins on p. 54: The Staller, The Speed Demon, The Supervisor, The Saver, The Self-Medicator. For leadership growth, we should immediately address The Supervisor: You fail to properly train, micromanaging others, failing to empower them to grow and learn (p. 57). We should likewise begin performance coaching at the same time.

Energize

Energy Management workshops begin with an average workday audit. Martell recommends the same. If we could audit her time and find what tasks were sucking all her time and energy, we could then transfer those tasks to someone else (p. 70). Remember, our goal as a leader is increasingly managing our energy, not our time. The proactive person already has blocks in their calendar that work best for various activities – not just their time, but also their energy (p. 134). This should include segments for supporting, developing, and coaching our teams. You can batch similar tasks on the same day to save time and energy by switching tasks as little as possible (p. 147).

Recall from our Energize2Lead (E2L) workshops, If you can find out what each of your employees loves to do, then productivity will accelerate (p. 189). That’s the essence of understanding the preferred, or upper E2L profile dimension. When we apply this to ourselves, we’ll be more energized, and more authentic. When you’re energized by passion, the way you talk about your goals and the future has a different energy, and there’s nothing more contagious than energetic people (p. 205).

Coach

In Chapter 9, Martell introduces four time hacks. Two are terrific for a leader’s toolbox. In our Feedback (Communication) workshop, we role play a Brief-Back Exercise and learn it’s easy to miss many details when requests are made. Another tool is Martell’s Definition of Done (p. 153). These definitions each start with the statement “This task is done when…” and may range from a simple definition to a more complex definition comprising facts, feelings, and functionality.

We can call the second hack The 1:3:1 Rule (p. 154-155). Many Leadership Philosophy (PLP) documents request sharing solutions along with issues, and this new rule goes a bit further:

1.   Define the one problem that needs to be solved.
2.   Offer three viable solutions.
3.   Make one suggestion from that list of possible solutions. 

Summary

Overall, our goal is migration from transactional management to transformational leadership (p. 173):

Transactional                      Transformational
Management                       Leadership

Tell                                         Outcome
Check                                    Measure
Next                                      Coach

Becoming a better leader and coach at the same time.

If you want to have a high-performance team,
learn how to coach successfully. (p. 180)

Coaching Story | Reflections | 100 Stories

Since embarking on my leadership journey after leaving ‘Corporate America’ in 2010, the importance of coaching has grown immensely. Here’s a couple easy ways to think about it:

If you want to guarantee that you will not improve at anything DO NOT have a coach.
If you want to guarantee that your organization will not improve at anything DO NOT have a coaching culture.

There’s no shortage of books, articles, and even certifications all centered on coaching. Over the years, the most enduring of them all is Peak, by the late Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. The concept of Deliberate Practice:

• Develops skills that other people have already figured out how to do and for which effective training techniques have been established
• Takes place outside one's comfort zone and requires a student to constantly try things that are just beyond his or her abilities
• Involves well-defined, specific goals and often involves improving some aspect of the target performance
• Requires a person's full attention and conscious action
• Involves feedback and modifications of efforts in response to that feedback
• Both produces and depends on effective mental representations
• Nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically

Not only ties together an array of best leadership practices, it also helps cross the Knowing-Doing Gap by developing mental representations, or preexisting patterns of information - facts, images, rules, and relationships.

The best part of Peak may be that deliberate practice fosters an active, abundance mindset, where over time we may individually, or organizationally, achieve far beyond what we thought possible. 

Reflections | 100 Stories.

Influence & Insight | March 2023

Leadership Story | Leaders Focus on the Larger Things

Have you noticed the surge in reports of companies requiring that employees return to work - or return to office? Mark Crowley, via LinkedIn, pointed out a recent 17 Feb Wall Street Journal article  What CEOs Are Getting Wrong About the Future of Work — and How to Make It Right (may need subscription). It’s worth a look. The article cites Wharton professor Adam Grant who says that some leaders are using this moment to figure out how to create happier, more productive workplaces. Others, he argues, are shrinking from change, and risk being left behind. Another way to think about this is to consider adopting an abundance mindset by asking “What opportunities has the Covid pandemic revealed with regard to how we work together,” rather than instinctively (scarcity mindset) attempting to take control and revert to 2019 practices. 

A very interesting finding by Grant in the article was kind of staggering—meeting one person helped by your work for five minutes was enough to almost double your effort and productivity. This was hard to do in the old world of work. But in this virtual world, hey, let’s get a customer to pop into our Zoom for 10 minutes, even though they are on the other end of the world, and talk about why they appreciate our product or our service and what we could do better. That is a great feedback mechanism, and maybe can jump-start some innovation.

Where does this impulse to take command and control come from? Jennifer Garvey Berger offers a likely explanation in Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps. One of the more pernicious mindtraps is Trapped by Control, and this desire to control uncontrollable outcomes often leads us toward perverse and unhelpful moves as we substitute one element that can be measured for the larger thing we care about that can’t be measured. That sees to be what newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal are reporting. Rather than address the complex dynamics and opportunities of a hybrid work environment, many companies and supervisors are simply demanding immediate return to work easily measurable via a timecard.

It’s not a surprise that the percentage of clients (during coaching sessions) mentioning a search for a new job, or a transfer to a more flexible supervisor or program, has increased during the Covid/Post-Covid period.

What is your company focusing on: Strategy and Opportunity, or Command and Control?

Leaders Focus on the Larger Things.

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps | Book Review

Our experience of rightness kills curiosity and
openness to data that proves us wrong. (p. 46)

Subtitled How to Thrive in Complexity, is a concise examination of five quirks we all recognize and likely have fallen prey to at one time or another. Jennifer Garvey Berger’s work is particularly relevant in today’s typically chaotic organizational environment, which tends to trigger the five mindtraps associated with Berger’s five quirks. We can think of the quirks leading to counterintuitive behaviors. There are ways that our internal wiring tells us to do one thing, when the smart leadership move is to something totally opposite (p. 6). It’s the interactions of all these unpredictable things that create complexity (p. 8).

Berger’s work reminds us a bit of Navy SEAL Jeff Boss’ Navigating Chaos, in that a curious mindset serves as excellent way to overcome any of the five mindtraps. This review offers an additional way to think about/address the five mindtraps based on workshops in an Academy Leadership Excellence Course, in addition to the Keys provided by Berger.

Simple Stories | Data vs Evaluation

We don’t create stories on purpose most of the time; they are created in the background as we seek to make sense of the often-senseless parts of our lives (p. 25). We can think of our stories as presented in Crucial Conversations, our reactions to situations where we’ll often choose a role such a helpless victim. Once we have a simple story in place, we try to use that to reward the heroes and punish the villains and ensure this never happens again (p. 27).

Berger informs us we are constantly projecting from the things we have seen in the past to what the future will look like (p. 28). This is very similar to our findings in our Feedback workshop, where a focus on data, rather than evaluating or interpreting, helps avoid creating labels, stereotypes, prejudices or damaging self-fulfilling prophecies. Berger shares the same: Worse, once a hypothesis is made about someone, we select data that supports our hypothesis (p. 32).

Recall that a coaching best practice is asking for the one being coached to evaluate themselves.

Rightness | Point-Proving

We can generally take any opinion we have and explain very logically why the opinion is the right one, gathering evidence thoughtfully to show why we are certain (p. 42). Being right feels good, it’s a powerful emotion.

Berger quotes Daniel Kahneman: 

“Our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and
our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our
ignorance and uncertainty of the world we live in.” (p. 45)

Usually in our Leader’s Compass workshops, I’ll share the five ways we tend to communicate with each other via Christine Comaford’s Smart Tribes:

1.   Information sharing.
2.   Requests.
3.   Promises or commitments.
4.   Sharing of oneself.
5.   Debating, decision-making or point-proving.

Recall that of the five, only making requests and promises or commitments leads to improvements or breakthroughs. Berger’s rightness corresponds well with point-proving, probably the most pernicious of Comaford’s communication forms. Berger also provides a golden nugget: Listen to learn rather than listen to fix (pp. 54-55).

Agreement | Groupthink

These are mindtraps (p. 61) when we believe that agreeability is a virtue, and that disagreement should be fixed with compromise (or collaboration). One of the most consistent findings in our leadership programs is that most of us tend toward conflict avoidance.

This means that rather than understanding the whole of a topic or
issue – including those pesky pieces of data we might disagree
about – we home in on what we think other people will like. (p. 63) 

Agreement is somewhat a balancing act. In Leveraging the Power of Conflict workshops the Collaboration Strategy offers the strongest win-win outcome. On the other hand, in our Effective Decision-Making workshops we learn one of the disadvantages of participative decision making is falling into the trap of “groupthink” if concern is mainly on consensus. Extended collaboration with the objective of learning more seems a prudent approach. In complexity, having more options is always better, because you can’t possibly know beforehand which options will actually pay off (p. 65).

Control | E2L Red/Green

“What’s really tragic is that I seem totally out of control at home as well as at work!” (p. 75)

Control is one of the mindtraps because, like the others, it leads us in exactly the wrong direction in complex and fast-moving times (p. 76).

We believe that being in control is critical
to our success and happiness. (p. 79)

This tendency comes up repeatedly in leadership workshops and coaching sessions, usually at the expense of delegation or creating developmental opportunities for others. We hold on too tight.

We this this very frequently in Energize2Lead (E2L) profiles, in the instinctive (lower) dimension, with the appearance of green and red colors. Green instinctive is drawn to planning and organizing and red instinctive is a very strong bias toward action. Together we may think of the two-color combination as command and control.

Our desire to control uncontrollable outcomes often
leads us toward perverse and unhelpful moves as we
substitute one element that can be measured for the
larger thing we care about that can’t be measured (p. 80).

Berger advises us that instead of craving control, we have to shift to thinking about influence (p. 85). A great leadership mindset. She also shares two terrific (coaching) questions (p. 86): What can I help enable? What could enable me?

Ego | Title or Position

It turns out that the strongest trap is created by the person we are wanting to seem to be to ourselves and to others (p. 95). This tendency to covet an image is likely the result of a scarcity mindset.

…most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding (p. 98).

The solution: An abundance mindset, which leads to gratitude. The problem is, we tend not to have a sense of the way the elements of our lives shape into a beautiful and helpful pattern (p. 100).

Let’s return to Jeff Boss for a moment:

This, in many ways, is like “listening to learn” from others, except
you’re turning that curiosity onto yourself and getting more curious.
about how you’re making sense of the world. (p. 109)

Our Leadership Philosophy

Berger follows the five mindtrap chapters with Building a Ladder to Escape the Mindtraps. We can easily substitute our Leadership Philosophy for the ladder. Let’s look at an example of a Leadership Philosophy addressing each of the five mindtraps as a means of continuously addressing and overcoming them.

Simple story. Leader as coach is a powerful theme in our philosophy. The more we focus on coaching, or genuinely helping others, at the expense of evaluation (creating stories) the better outcomes over time.

Being right. Expressions of curiosity or humility offer a powerful antidote. Likewise, genuine interest in feedback invites others to both help us and offer innovative team solutions.

Agreement. Creation of a safe environment leads to discussion, collaboration and disagreement, often the beginning of innovative breakthroughs. Safety beats conflict avoidance.

Control. A developmental mindset, along with coaching everyone allowing new levels of performance is very energizing. When we genuinely care about others, the impulse to control goes away.

Ego. Realize that leadership should be used as a verb, not a noun. Genuine leadership comprises aligned activities in pursuit of an objective. Thinking of leadership as a noun traps us into continuously thinking of title or position, when we should be thinking of influence and coaching.

Summary

Our ability to grow beyond our reflexes is likely to shape what
happens to us a species as we reject simplistic reactions and find our
bigger selves so that we can solve some of the most complex
challenges humanity has ever faced (p. 135).

Live your Leadership Philosophy.

Coaching Story | Leaders Embrace Neurodiversity

Over the past few months one of my clients has revealed that they are on the autism spectrum, and we have started discussing some of the unique challenges faced by a highly intelligent professional on the spectrum in a modern, interconnected work environment. Our most recent coaching session highlighted how transitions, or in this case, assignment to a new project, can be rather stressful. Additional, specific challenges include:

• Physical location within a group of 20 cubicles
• Meeting and connecting with new team members
• Learning and knowledge curve due to new program

Not surprisingly the coaching client, somewhat overwhelmed in this new environment, was told “You’re unapproachable.”

Note to aspiring leaders: Many of the traits people on the autism spectrum have may simply be considered more acute versions of traits we commonly encounter.

For example engineers are often considered introverted and not very social - a stereotype. My client is a perfect example, extremely knowledgeable in specialized fields, but overwhelmed when placed in a cubicle among twenty others. After discussing with a supervisor, the client is now is now working in a different space in a cluster of 3 cubicles. Terrific solution.

Our Energize2Lead (E2L) profiles can be very helpful in this type of situation. For example my client prefers to work independently with a sense of control (E2L preferred green, red and blue colors, no yellow). Additionally, the client has a very strong educator background. Approach:  The client sought out and was placed in a 30 day training program, and not surprisingly took notes and quickly shared how the course may be improved. As a result the client has been invited to join the training team and is additionally planning to launch twenty minute brown bag lunch sessions. 

Two wonderful success stories. We additionally identified 1:1 meetings, rather than group sessions, as an effective approach for connecting with others. We’ll follow up in five weeks or so and see how the brown bag sessions and 1:1 approach work.

The term diversity has seemingly become ubiquitous, and we may wonder sometimes if organizations are more concerned with image rather than genuinely expanding the breadth of their teams and workforce. Does your organization embrace professionals on the spectrum? Do you even know?

Leaders Embrace Neurodiversity.

Influence & Insight | February 2023

Leadership Story | Leaders Seek Meaningful Purpose

We’re using the new, third edition of Crucial Conversations in our Advanced Leadership Communications workshop. The book is a little more complicated now, with nine ‘Dialog Skills’ rather than seven. I’ll admit a bit of skepticism toward the new edition, as seven dialog skills seemed quite a range for development already. In our most recent communications workshop, individual self assessments indicated needed improvement primarily in two skills.

The first dialog skill was Choose Your Topic. We had a lengthy discussion revealing an enduring conflict due to not having the ‘Right” conversation. We often don’t have the right conversation because we confuse between content, process, or relationship issues. The likely culprit in the conflict was a relationship, and will require not pretending process or content is the actual issue.

Our second low scoring dialog skill was Retake Your Pen, and has to do with reactions when receiving feedback. many of us fear feedback because it threatens our safety or our instinctive needs (self-worth). The CURE for this is realizing we are in control of our reaction to feedback and should Collect ourself, seek to Understand, Recover emotionally and Engage and look for truth in what we were told. 

Turns out my prior skepticism was unfounded as the lowest scoring dialog skill chapters the new ones included in the new third edition. 

Our final activity during this recent Graduate Leadership Course was sharing our Life’s Purpose Statement. Interestingly, most of the answers were very similar. All five of us find helping and coaching others fulfilling. 

When’s the last time you thought about your purpose in life? And what are you doing to have the right conversations about relationships?

Leaders Seek Meaningful Purpose.

You’re the Leader. Now What? | Book Review

Our expertise and our power to decide
get in the way of optimal outcomes. (p. 8)

Is a how-to reference – pick it up to find a tactic or process you can use as you face the specific challenges of the moment (p. 10). Dr. Richard Winters of the Mayo Clinic offers challenging medicine for leaders overinvested in expertise, particularly our own. This review highlights several effective leadership tactics from Part I of the book and compares the ROW Forward Framework with John Boyd’s OODA Loop (Part II).

Tactics

In Academy Leadership Effective Decision-Making Workshops our decision-making spectrum spans decide, consult individually, consult group, facilitate & delegate. Winters repeatedly shares a Quaker Oats (failed) acquisition case study highlighting that we tend to overplay our expertise (p. 20). It was a billion-dollar failure where each decision Quaker Oats made … failed to incorporate the perspectives of key customers, distributors, and promoters (p. 25). A good reminder why our leadership philosophy must request feedback, especially when we’re blinded by our own power and passion.

We tend to trust time-based decision making more than slowing down allowing collaboration. False urgency likely fuels this. The authors found that process is six times more important than analysis in improving decision-making effectiveness (p. 26). Wow! Consider that when relying on subject matter experts, since we’ve all worked with individuals who are deeply analytical – armed with spreadsheets and diagrams and facts – but just don’t seem to get the big picture (p. 28).

According to the Cynefin Framework, each decision falls into one of five domains (p. 35): 

• Clear
• Complicated
• Complex
• Chaotic
• Confused

 Winters explains that Complicated Decisions have several challenges including experts become trapped by entrained thinking and paralysis by analysis. In our Setting Leadership Priorities workshops, many attendees admit often working in “Crisis Mode” Management, where we Do First! Manage Second! Communicate Third! and if we have time, Plan and Set Goals.  Winters offers several actions you can take to lead effectively during a crisis of chaos (pp 50-52): 

• Act with Urgency
• Leverage Your Leadership Team
• Delegate Decisions
• Admit Vulnerability
• Liberate Time for Deliberate Focus
• Be Transparent and Communicate
• Bring the Backchannel Forward
• Amplify Mission and Values
• Celebrate People and Accomplishments
• Recognize the Human Impact

Living our leadership philosophy and delegation seems a good start.

When facing a complex challenge, our most effective leaders
learn to switch off their expertise. (p. 53)

 What gets in the way or what do we need to shut off? In Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps, Jennifer Garvey Berger described five reflexive shortcuts that leaders commonly take as they think about complex issues (p. 63): 

• Simple stories
• Rightness
• Agreement
• Control
• Ego

Looking at Control and Ego, it makes one think of a dominant green and red instinctive Energize2Lead (E2L) Profile, where we tend to take charge when under stress.

The concept of a “Clickable Phrase” is introduced on pages 143-145 and it’s terrific. When offered, usually in a passive tone, a phrase such as “It will never work,” we can counter with “Just exactly what won’t work?” Then we may repeatedly “click” leading to an effective discussion and coaching session.

Frameworks

The ROW Forward Framework (pp. 164-165) reminds one of the OODA Loop (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act). Both are iterative or recurring constructs. Winter’s Framework: 

• Construct Shared Reality and direction
• Generate multiple Options
• Identify the Way Forward and create action
• Repeat the ROW Forward

We often get in our own way. Winters has an interesting term: The cognitive headlock -- used by leaders in all industries. It’s a decision by the leader to simply push through resistance, employing their expertise and power against their colleagues (p. 163). Think of false urgency, or Quadrant III (urgent not important) actions from our Setting Leadership Priorities workshops.

Creating a share vision (p. 166) reminds us of Crucial Conversations. Recall we can’t start a Crucial Conversation without Mutual Purpose and we cannot maintain one without Mutual Respect. Winters recommends as a rule of thumb, reserve 70 percent of the available time to create shared reality, 20 percent to identify multiple options for how to move forward, and 10 percent to plan the way forward (p. 171). We likely need to allocate most of our energy toward alignment as well. Historically, creating shared reality with colleagues who disagree among themselves, or with an organization’s chief, has been a difficult proposition for even the most well-meaning leader (p. 201).

On pages 223-224 Winters shares an excellent list of typical leader worries: I would lose my independence and I would be dependent on others really jump out and may be your favorites also. Limiting assumptions also get in our way, my favorite is If I don’t micromanage, things go wrong (p. 225). This assumption must be the all-time favorite brought up in Setting Leadership Priorities Workshops.

Interestingly the researcher Paul Nutt noted that the likelihood of a successful decision increases when a leader involves others in the process (p. 244). Recall in our Effective Decision-Making Workshop case studies, only one third (The Coast Guard Captain) of the individually made decisions were effective.

Summary

A final golden nugget is the concept of the Eccentric Genie or Vanishing Options Test (pp. 248-250) whereby one challenges a wish or goal with “You cannot do that. But what else can you do?” Repeated challenges eventually prompt creativity and innovation.

Shared vision is the first step in the decision-making process
that moves a group toward action. (p. 233)

Note: Dr. Winters generously provided a copy of his book for review

Coaching Story | Leaders Seek Aligned Values

Predisposition is a terrific word. 

When launching the Core Values Alignment Workshop I usually play a short video by Jim Collins. Collins asks the question “How do you get people to share core values?” And he answers that you don’t. Instead Collins reminds us we should seek people predisposed to, or already aligned with, our values. That’s the tricky part. Later we see a clip featuring the late Tony Hsieh noting that most organizational core values sound alike and often appear a marketing construct or a compliance document for new employee orientation. Hsieh shares that genuine core values guide both hiring and firing decisions, completely independent of job performance.

A colleague of several years who relocated during the Covid pandemic reached out recently after a significant job opportunity surfaced. Imagine a recruiter letting you know that your career dream job opportunity just came true in just the area you relocated. We formed a small team to work on the application, update a LinkedIn profile, etc. After that, I cautiously asked “What do you think of including your Personal Leadership Philosophy?” along with the formal application. My colleague was thinking the same. Turns out that a rich leadership discussion occurred during the interview prompted by the leadership philosophy, making a lasting impression along with the Energize2Lead profile.  My colleague just accepted the job offer. Looks like the interview process demonstrated aligned values leading to a successful outcome.

Leaders Seek Aligned Values.

Influence & Insight | January 2023

Leadership Story | Leaders Share Their Philosophy

Two recent Energize2Lead (E2L) workshops highlight a growing tendency of emerging leaders to share their leadership philosophies in order to build more effective and higher performing teams. Let’s recount the workshops.

In the first workshop, we had eighteen attendees. Roughly half the group had attended one or more prior leadership events, and for the other half, the E2L survey and workshop were new. Here’s the interesting part. Before we started the Friday afternoon 1/2 day workshop, the Team Leader shared with the group the importance of a ‘Psychologically Safe’ environment. In addition, the team leader also mentioned that each new Team Member receives a copy of The Phoenix Project. Pretty powerful introductory remarks leading to a very engaging workshop. Not surprisingly,, as this team continues growing, we’ll conduct additional workshops and deepen sharing while the team becomes even more successful.

In the second workshop, we again had eighteen participants with half having attended a prior January workshop. The thrust of this E2L workshop was the Team Leader’s strong desire to impress a Servant Leadership model upon the group. It can be a challenge for individuals in a support organization, such as IT, to see themselves as leaders or influential. During opening remarks the Team Leader introduced first thoughts about Servant Leadership & I mentioned that every workshop participant would receive a copy of Everyday People, Extraordinary Leadership in support of the Team Leader’s leadership philosophy. I further mentioned that the book’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership:

• Model the Way
• Inspire a Shared Vision
• Challenge the Process
• Enable Others to Act
• Encourage the Heart

Correspond well to our workshop. For example, we cannot enable others to act when we don’t know each other well at a deep, instinctive level. At the end of the workshop, the Team Leader read his leadership philosophy aloud to the group. After all the sharing during the workshop, the reading was quite moving.

It’s a delight working with strong Team Leaders who see their work as much more than a job or a task.

Leaders Share Their Philosophy.

The Phoenix Project | Book Review

I’ve long believed that to effectively manage IT
is not only a critical competency, but a significant
predictor of company performance (p. 335).

By Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford is a natural companion to Jill Dyché’s The New IT. Recall Dyché introduces a spectrum of six IT Archetypes: Tactical, Order Taking, Aligning, Data Provisioning, Brokering, and IT Everywhere. Additionally, The New IT’s three-part focus on IT Issues, Transformation and Leadership, respectively, correspond well to The Phoenix Project.

The Phoenix Project is primarily an engaging, realistic story of transformation at Parts Unlimited, and like The New IT, contains valuable leadership lessons. This review captures transformative leadership moments corresponding to our leadership experiences as the Phoenix Project matures from a Tactical to IT Everywhere archetype.

Tactical | Getting Started

After spending millions launching Phoenix (think modernization initiative) Parts Unlimited remains stuck in a tactical, reactive mode, unable to competently take orders much less provision data. “We need to increase our market share and average order sizes. Customers need to be able to buy from us wherever they want, whether it’s on the Internet or in our retail stores.” (p. 21) Bill Palmer, the new VP of IT Operations has an initial insight into his leadership philosophy – expectations clarity by asking Steve the CEO: What do you want most from me? And what don’t you want? (p. 22)

Steve launches a difficult and lengthy series of observations, repeatedly receiving feedback comprised of personal interpretation, rumors, labels, unsolicited advice and threats:

• [Patty] has a reputation for loving processes more than people (p. 31).
• He was installing some security application that John needed to get up and running this week (p. 38).
• For years, I’ve been trying to get people to use our change management process and tools. But just like John, no one uses it (p. 44).
• Brent, Brent, Brent, Brent! Can’t we do anything without him? (p. 69).
• Interrupts. People in the business constantly ask our staff to do things for them. Especially marketing (p. 77).

Bill spends a great deal of energy sorting data or facts from evaluation, a best practice we learn in our Feedback workshop. A huge Knowing-Doing Gap emerges since there is apparently little or no knowledge-sharing, training or development.

Bill’s mentor, Erik, challenges Bill’s thinking beyond IT Issues toward Transformation and Leadership. A breakthrough occurs when Patty realizes “I suppose I care more about our survival that whether we use our old process or not.” (p. 82) Erik asks Bill about the nature of work. “But you have a much bigger problem, and it has nothing to do with your argle-bargle of ‘efficiencies’ and ‘process.’ Your problem right now is that you obviously don’t actually know what ‘work’ is.” (p. 87) Erik offers a terrific analog. If you think IT Operations has nothing to learn from Plant Operations, you’re wrong (p. 91).

Bill realizes his organization is terribly misaligned and employs one of the most effective Conflict Leadership Strategies. “My goal is to observe and seek to understand.” (p. 112) The first breakthroughs emerge. We’ve gotten more change, incident, and escalation processes going in the last week that we have in the last five years (p. 118). Bill has another revelation. Unplanned work – [is] the most destructive type of work (p. 159). Just like our Urgent and Not Important category explored during Setting Leadership Priorities workshops.

Beginning to Lead

Faced with the realization Steve’s expectations were not SMART Goals, and receiving no appreciation for his initial breakthroughs, Bill quits. Or put another way, Bill demonstrates his leadership philosophy non-negotiables. Steve realizes his error allowing Bill’s return. Steve reflects upon prior success: “What made those teams great is that everyone trusted one another.” (p. 184)

The group begins aligning. He [Erik] asked on what basis do we decide whether we can accept a new project? (p. 195) The team learns to say no. “When you spend all your time firefighting, there’s little time or energy left for planning.” (p. 196) New realizations, Aligning and Data Provisioning, occur. “Remember Jimmy, the goal is to increase the throughput of the entire system, not just the number of tasks being done.” (p. 199) Erik challenges John’s single focus compliance mindset. “You never see the end-to-end business process, so I guarantee you that many of the controls you want to put in aren’t even necessary.” (p. 201)

A powerful metric emerges: The wait time for a given resource is the percentage that the resource is busy, divided by the percentage that the resource is idle (p. 213). Perhaps this is why so many bosses don’t have time for their subordinates. New success definitions form. You win when you protect the organization without putting meaningless work into the IT system. And you win when even more when you can take our meaningless work out of the IT system (p. 221). Another breakthrough toward IT Everywhere: Creating and prioritizing work inside a department is hard. Managing work among departments must be at least ten times more difficult (p. 236). Proactive rather than Reactive Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are now sought. Our goal is not just to improve business performance but to get earlier indicators of whether we’re going to achieve them or not, so we can take appropriate action (p. 268).

IT Everywhere

As Bill’s point of view expands company-wide, and he now sees IT very much like Parts Unlimited manufacturing plants, he essentially reshapes his next job position, without realizing what he has done. “I needed to span the departmental boundaries of Development and IT Operations.” (p. 301)

• I can work together to build a deployment run book, to capture all the lessons learned from our mistakes (p. 304).
• All the developers were using exactly the same operating system, library versions, database settings, and so forth (p. 308).
• People are staying up all night because everything was going right (p. 317).
• I want to commend you for truly working together and being worthy of one another’s trust (p. 323).

You’ve helped me see that IT is not merely a department. Instead, it’s pervasive, like electricity (p. 331).

Summary

We may all learn from Bill’s story, especially if we believe that because of our expertise, lack of direct reports, or position we are therefore not leaders.

We need to create a culture that reinforces the value
of taking risks and learning from failure and the need
for repetition and practice to create mastery (p. 329).

Coaching Story | Leaders Support Character Development

A 360 review may reveal an organization’s culture and priorities with regard to professional development. A recent 360 debrief with a client offered a most interesting insight into her company’s culture and priorities. Let’s take a look at the format of the 360 used (QuadLead):

All survey participants (Boss, Self, Peer, & Direct Report categories) are asked to rank, from 1 to 12, the importance of six Leadership Competencies and six Leadership Characteristics. A common result occurs when a strong technical professional is promoted into a supervisory or leadership role. Frequently in these cases the technical professional will choose more Leadership Competencies than Leadership Characteristics as one through six in organizational importance. That makes sense, especially if one has been encouraged and rewarded for individual achievement, educational attainment, etc. In a new supervisory role, the 360 may reveal job expectation misalignment.

Back to the client. Interestingly my client had mentioned during our November leadership course that she did not believe her new organization placed any importance on leadership development. Privately, I was a bit skeptical about her observation. The results of her 360 validated her position. Here’s what happened. In the Self Category, my client selected Communication Skills, Job Competence, Ethics/Integrity, Leadership Image, Coaching/Mentoring and Vision & Strategy as the six most important. Very balanced, three Leadership Competencies and three Leadership Characteristics. In sharp contrast, the Boss category (there was more than one boss in this 360) selected Vision & Strategy, Execution, Industry Knowledge, Leading Change, Communication Skills & Job Competence as the six most important! Six Leadership Competencies and zero Leadership Characteristics. Never seen this level of misalignment before. 

What would these 360s reveal about your organization? About you as a leader and what you communicate to those you promote?

Leaders Support Character Development.