Influence & Insight | April 2025

Leadership Story | Leaders Look Forward

There’s a lot of anxiety today about Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially the possibility of AI technology replacing jobs. It’s worth exploring from a leadership perspective. In our Academy Leadership Setting Leadership Priorities Workshop, we discuss the difference between effective and efficient, defining:

Efficient: Doing things right.
Effective: Doing the right things and doing them in order of priority.

Workshop audiences quickly conclude that focus on efficiency is the domain of the manager and that focus on effectiveness is the domain of the leader. Often during the session we recall the fate of organizations that seemed to focus on the former rather than the latter with devastating results. Companies such as Blockbuster Video, Kodak, Nortel Networks and others come to mind.

During a recent graduation ceremony for a senior leader team, lers of a county information technology team, a couple members shared emerging job descriptions, now in very high demand, for those who understand and effectively use emerging AI Tools such as ChatGPT and others. It was an illuminating discussion and the challenge for me was attempting to remember the new job description names which are quickly becoming ubiquitous.

The discussion and subsequent newly identified jobs are very similar to what Jim Clifton and Jim Harter describe in the Future of Work section of It’s The Manager. One key finding: An Accenture global study of 1,000 large companies identified three categories of jobs that AI will create (p. 177):

• Trainers: those who need to teach AI systems how to interpret interactions and perspectives.
• Explainers: those who interpret AI to make it contextually useful in making decisions.
• Sustainers: those who evaluate the ethical and performance characteristics of AI.

The new job descriptions the county leaders were talking about sounded a lot like trainers, explainers and sustainers. More importantly, the discussion was validating that a focus on effectiveness remains in demand today, while a focus on efficiency (think word search) may easily be replaced by a sophisticated AI engine. Just as Setting Leadership Priorities workshop participants discover that effectiveness often centers around leading people, Gallup authors have concluded:

The most important jobs of the future will require social skills, and human interactions
will remain the most powerful way to build relationships with customers. (p. 179)

Leaders Look Forward.

It's The Manager | Book Review

“The old boss-to-employee, command and control leadership environment has "worked" when it comes to building process efficiency systems, engineering large buildings and creating infrastructure. But the top-down leadership techniques of the past have not adapted to a workplace that now demands coaching and collaboration to thrive" (p. 1)

Jim Clifton & Jim Harter's first of their three book series published between 2019 and 2023, subtitled Moving From Boss to Coach, explains the why and the how current and aspiring leaders should be coaches rather than traditional, authoritative bosses. Although this work was written pre-Covid, contemporary Gallup findings in the author's third book in the series, Culture Shock, validate if not amplify 2019 observations, in particular with regard to employee engagement. This review explains the why, or corporate engagement findings and offers suggestions regarding how -- by examining the two larger Boss to Coach and The Future of Work sections.

Landscape

Consider relatively flat individual employee engagement numbers which have hovered around 30% for decades. The authors recommend a simple, yet breakthrough goal for any leader or human resources department. If, of your managers, 30% are great, 20% are lousy and 50% are just there -- which are about the U.S. national averages of employee engagement -- double the 30% to 60% and cut the 20% to single digits. Do this and your stock price will boom (p. 14).

How might one start this process? Perhaps we should rely less on, but not abandon process-oriented results driven corporate metrics and increase focus on individual personal development. Matt Lieberman's findings, published in Harvard Business Review, found that focusing on both people and results increases sixfold how frequently we are viewed as great leaders.

Take a look at the changing demands of the workplace (p. 21), similarly described in multi-generational works such as Gentelligence or What Millennials Want From Work:

 Past                                                                        Future

It's tempting to proclaim we're casualties of matrixed working environments. Yet how connected your teams of managers are as a group will determine whether the teams they manage will support other teams or not (p. 27). Stanley McChrystal found and describes the same in Team of Teams. We should foster knowledge-sharing and informal communication channels between teams in addition to increasing personalized individual development plans.

Boss to Coach

If leaders were to prioritize one action, Gallup recommends that
they equip their managers to become coaches. (p. 89)

 This finding mirrors the Culture Shock recommendation:

Make sure your managers hold one meaningful
conversation per week with each employee.

That's the conclusion, and the authors answer to how is called Moneyball for workplaces, essentially the Gallup Q12 Engagement Survey Questions (p. 109):

Q1: I know what is expected of me at work.
Q2: I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
Q3: At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
Q4: In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
Q5: My supervisors, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
Q6: There is someone at work who encourages my development.
Q7: At work, my opinions seem to count.
Q8: The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
Q9: My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
Q10: I have a best friend at work.
Q11: In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
Q12: This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Besides a deliberate shift to leader as coach, much of the Q12 seems to hint at creating a motivational environment. Think about the Motivational Assessment from an Academy Leadership Creating a Motivational Environment workshop, spanning the discovery of what motivates or demotivates someone to identifying personal dreams and goals, foundational steps for any coach. It's difficult to underestimate the influence a single supervisor or manager may have:

One of Gallup's biggest discoveries is: The manager or team leader
alone accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement. (p. 114)

Here are additional tips on how to refocus our energies. The five traits of Great Managers (p. 126):

1.  Motivation - inspiring teams to get exceptional work done
2.  Workstyle - setting goals and arranging resources for the team to excel
3.  Initiation - influencing others to act, pushing through adversity and resistance
4.  Collaboration - building committed teams with deep bonds
5.  Thought process - taking an analytical approach to strategy and decision-making 

Future of Work

Return to Office remains a dominant workplace topic, even in our post-Covid era. That's probably because the most desired perk is workplace flexibility (p. 135). Employees are watching closely whether or not organizations "walk the talk" regarding work/life balance:

Whether an organization offers flexibility and whether it
actually honors flexibility are two different things. (p. 152)

Recall the Changing Demands of the Workplace or focus on my life rather than my job. The authors share the key to accommodating female employees to your organization is making your workplace culture flexible enough to accommodate family and life obligations (p. 151). It may very well be that women increasingly entering the workplace has spearheaded a focus on work-life balance. Maybe women are leading the way since the majority of Americans now report virtually no difference in gender preference for a boss (p. 145).

A couple other nuggets:

Keep in mind the ultimate outcome of flexible work: autonomy with accountability (p. 161). The formation of effective teams, especially those where individuals know and hold each other to high standards is paramount.

Beware of administrative leadership. Diversity training often fails when it feels mandated and is not part of a culture built on respect, strengths and leadership commitment (p. 138). Culture, not fads, matter.

Baby boomers have shown a greater desire than workers in other generations to develop their colleagues, and they often outpace younger workers in their capacity to build a business (p. 155). They are at a stage in life where they are natural coaches.

Employees in the workforce aren't looking for amenities such as game rooms, free food and fancy latte machines. But they are looking for greater flexibility, autonomy and the ability to lead a better life (p. 157). We should focus on what is meaningful.

Summary

Gallup's considerable data on engagement and recommendation to double it are a fantastic starting point for any manager who wishes to lead. Remember, becoming a leader is not about us.

Perhaps the most salient point is that
each individual employee -- women as well as men --
defines what a good life and career means for them. (p. 153) 

Team Gallup generously provided a copy of the book for review.

Coaching Story | Leaders Develop Others by Listening

Delegation remains one of the most common listed Action Plan Leadership Behaviors I Will Change in the Next 90 Days following an Academy Leadership Excellence Course (LEC), particularly for the most proficient Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). 

Let’s review the following Feedback Profiles, originally shared in 2020:

We can equate evaluation with talking or telling others what to do and coaching with listening and supporting. Discussing the two feedback profiles often has a lasting effect, especially on SMEs. Not surprisingly, during initial follow-on LEC coaching sessions, the desire to grow into the Leader as Coach role surfaces, but often with a challenge:

How do I start?

A common theme to virtually all of these coaching sessions is the initial presumption the SME/Manager has to figure out what is best for their subordinates, or what may be delegated to direct reports, all by themselves. It’s an unnecessary trap and seems a symptom of a lifetime of focus on individual professional accomplishment.

In our Coaching to Develop People workshop, we discover that in order to be an effective [leader as] coach, leaders must thoroughly understand the abilities, limitations, potential and professional goals of their people. Or put another way, we’re not going to figure these things out all by ourselves. In at least two coaching sessions this past month, we came up with the idea of supervisors and subordinates sharing motivation assessments and Energize2Lead Profiles (if available) in a one-on-one session. As the leader learns more about what motivates the subordinate and what things they like to do (preferred E2L dimension or top colors), both a development plan and candidate delegation task emerge, primarily formed by the subordinate.

Interestingly, this is the final takeaway in the book review of It’s The Manager — Let the employees tell you what they want - it’s not about us.

Leaders Develop Others by Listening.

Influence & Insight | March 2025

Leadership Story | Make Your Leadership Philosophy Personal

Every now and then, we’re encounter something completely out of the box, unique and exciting. Sometimes we encounter a Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP) telling a compelling lifetime story, or composed with very inspiring words.

A recent Leadership Excellence Course graduate composed her PLP as a dashboard, in Tableau Reader software. Not surprisingly, she strives to have a creative, fun, and empowering environment. Her commitments, likes, dislikes and non-negotiables may be viewed by hovering over the respective icons on the visual dashboard. 

The first of three listed values listed is creativity. Priorities are visually displayed, top to bottom, as horizontal bars, with the top priority the longest, and in the darkest color hue. 

It’s a work of art. It’s out of the box. It’s simply terrific. It’s authentic.

Make Your Leadership Philosophy Personal.

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff | Book Review

“We overreact, blow things out of proportion, hold on too tightly,
and focus on the negative aspects of life." (p. 1)

Dr. Richard Carlson's one hundred brief and simple chapters seemingly fall into categories that naturally align with multiple Academy Leadership Excellence Course (LEC) workshops: Setting Leadership Priorities, The Leader's Compass, and Energize2Lead (E2L). An additional category, Gratitude, is worth establishing as empathy, meaningfulness and compassion have increasingly emerged as leadership themes in recent LECs.

Priorities

Stephen Covey's four quadrants inform us Quadrant II is where opportunity forms and that we should spend more time performing such activities, rather than reacting to Quadrant I events. Consider expanding Quadrant II holistically, including activities such as exercise. Carlson seem to think this way too. You might become an early riser, for example, and spend one hour that is reserved for reading, praying, reflecting, meditating, your exercise, or however you want to use the time (p. 244).

Likewise, everyday small successes may become both habits and eventually, larger successes. All we really have to do is focus on those little acts of kindness, things we can do right now (p. 201). It's also a lot more fun. We take our own goals so seriously that we forget to have fun along the way, and we forget to cut ourselves some slack (p. 62).

Leader's Compass | High Performance

Toward the end of our Leader's Compass workshop, we learn energy is the fundamental currency of high performance.

Consider a corporate culture or boss demanding we always be on, 24/7. In such an environment, one is likely toggling between the upper two quadrants.

Much of our anxiety and inner struggle stems from our busy, overactive minds always needing something to entertain them, something to focus on, and always wondering "What's next?" (p. 50). We could call this a Professionally Busy mindset.

Tony Schwartz, co-author of The Power of Full Engagement, recommends redirecting activities to the right two quadrants. Carlson enthusiastically recommends activities in the lower right quadrant. Whether it's ten minutes of meditation or yoga, spending a little time in nature, or locking the bathroom door and taking a ten-minute bath, quiet time to yourself is a vital part of life (p. 69). Imagine redirecting from the upper left to the lower right quadrants. The next time you're feeling bad, rather than fight it, try to relax (p. 140). 

We all get angry or otherwise find ourselves in a highly negative state from time to time. When it comes to dealing with negative thoughts, you can analyze your thoughts, or you can learn to ignore them (p. 165). Remind yourself that it's your thinking that is negative, not your life (p. 228). 

Personal Energy (E2L)

Recall the three dimensions of our E2L profile; preferred, expectations and instinctive. When our activities (or jobs) don’t align with our preferred colors, our stress level rises and if our expectations (colors) are not met, we're now in instinctive mode consuming vast amounts of energy.

What you want to start doing is noticing your stress early before it gets out of hand (p. 54). Frequently, our right-brain traits (or yellow and blue colors) fade away under stress. Fearful, frantic thinking takes an enormous amount of energy and drains the creativity and motivation from our lives (p. 11).

Our E2L workshops demonstrate that 75% of people are wired differently than us and learning more about our expectations profiles help us approach each other according to our differences. I encourage you to consider deeply and respect the fact that we are all very different (p. 114).

Gratitude

Carlson repeatedly advises different forms of gratitude, and we may think of gratitude as the intersection between priorities, a leadership philosophy and our strongest personal energy source. Compassion develops your sense of gratitude by taking your attention off all the little things that most of us have learned to take too seriously (p. 18). We should cultivate gratitude as a lifetime habit. The point is to gear your attention toward gratitude, preferably first thing in the morning (p. 66).

Consider the opposite: Continuous, negative evaluation. Carlson calls this weatherproofing. Essentially, weatherproofing means that you are on the careful lookout for what needs to be fixed or repaired (p. 105).

Summary

Carlson reveals his own values. Each act of kindness rewards you with positive feelings and reminds you of the important aspects of life -- service, kindness, and love (p. 90). 

"I've yet to meet an absolute perfectionist whose life
was filled with inner peace." (p. 9)

Coaching Story | Leaders Create a Cultural Oasis

Recall Karin Hurt & David Dye’s Courageous Cultures 2021 book review, introducing a Cultural Oasis as the solution when wondering if it still possible to build a Courageous Culture on my team within unsupportive or toxic environments. Here’s a theory: Post-Covid, many employees Returning to Office (not work) immediately notice a reduction in autonomy, work-life balance, and subsequent motivation. Likely added compliance. This is one of the most common discussion points in leadership courses the past two years.

As a result, many don’t want to speak up or believe they can make a difference. Hurt and Dye remind us we can all relate to unsafe meetings or a work environment where the Fear of Speaking Up (FOSU) exists. 

As a countermeasure, three helpful cultural characters are offered:  

• Microinnovator The employee who consistently seeks out small but powerful ways to improve the business.
• Problem Solver The employee who cares about what’s not working and wants to make it better.
• Customer Advocate The employee who sees through your customers’ eyes and speaks up on their behalf.

Let’s encourage collaboration upon returning to the office, perhaps requesting volunteers for the three cultural roles above. 

Leaders Create a Cultural Oasis.

Influence & Insight | February 2025

Leadership Story | Leaders Seek Continuous Growth

Working with a senior leader team, we just concluded our first team coaching session after an in-house Graduate Leadership Course (GLC).

Let’s take a look at three of the top follow-on discussion points:

Continued Crucial Conversations. Nine dialogue skills are introduced in the Advanced Leadership Communications workshop, and one pair on the leader team, four months after the GLC, was still engaged in an ongoing dialogue. Wonderful! 

Advanced Energize2Lead (E2L) Profile and Team Profile discussion. This group, already well-versed in the three energy dimensions comprising our profiles, enjoyed the deeper discussion of what happens in our lower energy, or instinctive, dimension. For example, as a team the group has an overall tendency to become “Command and Control” oriented under stress. One of the team leaders has three of four personality traits radically change under stress and under stress the team leader has an even stronger impulse to demand that something be done. We’ll have to continue these discussions and perhaps ask how often the team is under high stress and/or aware that they are.

Development-Driven Decision-Making. In our Effective Decision-Making workshop, we introduce two distinct decision-making styles: Time-Driven  and Development-Driven. The four decision-making criteria:

• Decision Quality, or outcome
• Implementation, or achieved buy-in
• Cost, including schedule and program factors
• Development, or knowledge and team-building improvement

Audiences seem very comfortable with Time-Driven decisions, utilizing the first three criteria, while leaving out development. Introducing the Development-Driven model, which leaves out cost but includes development, comes as a surprise to most audiences, leading to deep discussion. Do you employ development-driven decision making as a leader? What conflict do you encounter when the two models collide?

Leaders Seek Continuous Growth.

What The Heck Is EOS? | Book Review 

“When you are 100% strong, everyone will be rowing
in the same direction and aligned around
the same short-term and long-term goals..." (p. 144)

Gino Wickman and Tom Bouwer's popular work is a terrific how-to-guide for building a company, akin to Jill Dyché's The New IT. Their Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) may be distilled into five tools detailed in chapters 3-7, respectively.

The authors describe a company's operating system as: 

The way a company organizes all of its human energy. (p. 1)

Imagine an ant farm, observed over a period of time. Now imagine observing an organization. A team of average people running their company on one operating system will outperform a team of high achievers, each doing it their own way, every day of the week (p. 3). EOS is specifically designed for a 10 to 250 person entrepreneurial company that is open-minded and growth-oriented (p. 5), and is comprised of 6 key components (p. 10):

This review compares tools used in each of the EOS components to Academy Leadership workshops and comments where additional leadership focus may further strengthen a company.

Alignment & Accountability

One of the primary strength of EOS is a continuous focus on alignment, similar to an Academy Leadership Focus & Alignment workshop. Recall in (Collins & Lazier) B.E. (Beyond Entrepreneurship) 2.0, VISION is comprised of Core Values & Beliefs leading to Purpose which leads to Mission.

EOS has a similar focus on vision, and the operating tool used is called the Vision/Traction Organizer, or V/TO (p. 15), comprised of 8 questions:

1. What are your Core Values?
2. What is your Core Focus?
3. What is your 10-year Target?
4. What is your Marketing Strategy?
5. What is your 3-Year Picture?
6. What is your 1-Year Plan?
7. What are your Rocks?
8. What are your Issues?

The latter two questions remind us of the After Action Review (AAR), in particular, Issues. EOS defines issues as a few things that need to be improved, fixed, or changed to make your company better (p. 21). This requires capable leaders though, who make the environment safe enough for open discussion. Communications should flow freely across all lines and departments, creating an open and honest culture (pp. 75-76). Stan McChrystal describes the same challenge in Team of Teams, learning that every person on each team needs to know at least one member of every other team.

With all of this terrific work done, individuals employing EOS likely would benefit from codifying a V/TO within a broader Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP), extending beyond day-to-day operating principles.

Goals

In Aligning & Accomplishing Goals workshop self-evaluations, attendees usually score high (3 or 4) when answering whether or not goals are set. However, toward the end of a typical self-evaluation scores drop (to 1 or 2) for questions about tracking or communicating goals.

The EOS embraces an elegant solution: The Scorecard. A Scorecard contains a handful of numbers that tell you how your company or department is doing (p. 117). A Scorecard must have 4 key columns: Who, Measurables, Goal, and date (p. 119). From an accountability standpoint, Who may be the most valuable, identifying a Specific Person of Accountability, or SPA. Good leaders assign SPAs, and use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed-Upon, Realistic & Trackable) Goals.

Priorities

During our Setting Leadership Priorities workshops, we identify our High Payoff activities, or HPAs. HPAs answer the following questions:

• What are you being paid to do?
• What do you do that produces the greatest results?
• What do you do that makes your company profitable?
• Why did the company hire you?
• What do you do that produces 80% of your results? 

In the EOS, the concept of Rocks is introduced, the 3-7 most important things that your company must get done in the next 90 days (p. 79). Further, each individual employee should have 1-3 Rocks every 90 days. A noteworthy part of EOS is that Rocks may include developmental objectives. For instance, you might have a Rock to take a class, read a book on time management, or help complete a big company project (p. 84).

Creating individual, developmentally based Rocks may the most significant way to strengthen EOS into a joint operational/leadership development system. Recall Lieberman's findings (HBR, Dec 2013) that when we focus on people and results, we're viewed as great leaders over 500% more often.

Meetings

In our Leading Productive Meetings workshops, we explore seven characteristics of effective meetings: 

• Meeting Preparation
• Develop a Focused Agenda
• Guidelines During the Meeting
• Chair the Meeting
• Take Good Notes
• Evaluate the Process
• After the Meeting

Some organizations, especially in the military have a daily or weekly "stand-up" meeting cadence. EOS summarizes these characteristics by clarifying It's what you do in meetings that's a waste of time (p. 92), and recommend a Weekly Meeting Pulse with the following specific agenda (p. 95):

• Make sure everything is kept on track.
• Keep the circles connected (stay connected and on the same page with your team).
• Hold each other accountable.
• Solve issues.

EOS includes a personal component in the weekly pulse. Every Level 10 (weekly) meeting begins with a segue, where each person on the team shares one piece of both personal and professional good news from the past week (p. 99). A recommended variant could invite individuals to recognize valuable contributions others have made in the past week, strengthening appreciation for each other.

People Analyzer

Virtually all Academy Leadership programs begin with the multidimensional Energize2Lead Workshop. In the EOS, The People Analyzer is a simple tool that pulls together Core Values and the Accountability Chart together and helps your organization identify if they have the Right People in The Right Seats (p. 131). This is an exceptional leadership tool. The EOS People Analyzer assesses individual Core Values Alignment for the following (p. 131):

• Be Humbly Confident
• Grow or Die
• Help First
• Do the Right Thing
• Do What You Say 

Additionally, the People Analyzer assesses the Right Seat fit by addressing (p. 135):

• Get It?
• Want It?
• Capacity to Do It? 

In our Creating a Motivational Environment workshops, we learn to ask: Is this an ability issue or a motivational issue when first encountering performance issues. Right Seat essentially does the same.

Summary

EOS takes best practices from numerous excellent sources, creating an attractive business operating system.

With additional focus on leadership development
and a strong coaching culture, EOS may possibly extend
well to companies beyond 10-250 people.

Coaching Story | Leaders Focus on Results and People

A colleague reached out over the past month, who recently left one of the world’s most prestigious and successful companies of our era. He’d had enough, and the “last straw” was being ordered to physically return to work. He’s since been leading hybrid technical teams at an apparently more flexible, and also successful organization.

This isn’t an isolated incident, and it’s worth reviewing recent findings regarding workplace trends.

Development Dimensions International (DDI) 2025 Global Leadership Forecast reveals a “purpose gap,” whereby C-Level teams are connected to organizational purpose, but front line managers not so much. DDI’s findings reveal five areas for increasing frontline manager purpose:

• Prioritize well-being
• Deepen customer connection
• Develop interpersonal skills
• Form effective senior executive teams
• Enhance the employee experience

Recall in Jennifer Deal and Alec Levinson’s What Millennials Want From Work, the authors focused on:

• The people
• The work
• The opportunities

In our book review this was called a genuine “Coaching and Connecting” culture — the single best action for creating a win-win environment while fostering an environment of trust.

Organizations, especially mature ones, appear to migrate toward operational excellence first, and if at all, focus on people second. We hear such business terms daily: SCRUM, EOS, etc…

Let’s not forget Matt Lieberman’s findings that when we focus on results and people, our leader effectiveness increases more than five-fold. Coaching Culture strength genuinely appears the organizational discriminator of our time.

The Best Leaders Focus on Results and People.

Influence & Insight | January 2025

Leadership Story | Cross The Knowing-Doing Gap

Frequently we’ll hear news of an amazing leader who seemingly has uncovered a new technique leading to spectacular results, when in fact, the leader has embraced tried and true principles that are generally ignored or forgotten.

This month Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal celebrates Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia in The Secrets of the Man Who Made Nvidia the World’s Most Valuable Company (behind WSJ paywall). The article is a terrific read, centered around a communication technique called T5T emails. T5T email is short for Top-5 Things that employees are working on, thinking about, things that they are noticing in their respective corners of the business.

Sounds great. Sounds novel. Thinking about Huang’s success brings to mind The Knowing-Doing Gap and Counter Mentor Leadership.

The Knowing-Doing Gap, penned over twenty years ago, remains a prescient book, especially as technology development and innovation accelerate. Recall the authors asked “What prevented organizations that are led by smart people from doing things that they know they ought to do?” Pfeffer and Sutton  found the answer in organizations that treated knowledge as a continuous, even fanatical sharing process rather than a static, often hoarding-based process. One organizational example of crossing the Gap cited was PSS/World Medical addressed through their values:

“The right to communicate with anyone, anywhere, without fear of retribution
is one of the core values at PSS.”

Likewise, in Counter Mentor Leadership, Kelly and Robby Riggs expose that most corporate managers rarely encourage input or feedback. Huang’s T5Ts serve as a perfect example of Crossing The Knowing-Doing Gap, in the process avoiding typical corporate manager pitfalls. According to Cohen, Huang has been reading all of the Top-5 Things sent to him for decades:

“If you send it,” he says, “I’ll read it.”

Lead by Crossing The Knowing-Doing Gap.

Leading With Questions | Book Review

“The primary difference between leaders and managers is that
leaders are those who ask the right questions whereas managers
are those tasked to answer those questions.” (p. 203)

Michael J. Marquardt and Bob Teide’s third edition work, subtitled How Leaders Discover POWERFUL QUESTIONS BY KNOWING HOW AND WHAT TO ASK, is finely researched and based on interviews with 45 leaders. Their book consists of three sections: An introduction and three chapters which answer the question Why? [ask questions]; four chapters which answer How? [to ask questions]; and four application chapters explaining when and how to ask powerful questions. This review reinforces the authors' three sections with additional ways to think about the power of Leading With Questions.

Why?

To start, let's put asking questions in context. Sheila Heen and Doug Stone (Thanks for the Feedback) group feedback into three forms: Appreciation, evaluation, and coaching. We seem to be pretty good at both expressing and receiving appreciation, so let's look closer at evaluation and coaching. We may loosely think of evaluation as talking and coaching as listening.

Years of facilitating leadership courses with highly educated managers or subject matter experts (SMEs) suggests the first feedback profile. If we wish to become a more effective leader we must greatly reduce the tendency to evaluate and greatly increase how much we coach (this review suggests by a factor of four).

Tiede and Marquardt notice that too often, we ask questions that disempower rather than empower our subordinates (p. 3). If we ask a question such as "Why did you mess this up?" we're really evaluating first rather than expressing genuine curiosity. Transitioning from a manager or technical expert to an effective leader isn't easy. When we become leaders, we feel it is important for us to have answers rather than questions or that asking questions -- or being unable to answer questions addressed to us -- may show that we are somehow lacking as leaders (p. 12). Consider how difficult innovation becomes when we cannot disclose what we don't know or that we are curious about the possible. Sydney Finkelstein calls companies that are unable to question their prevailing view of reality zombies (p. 18).

Marshall Goldsmith adds "asking by top leaders has a secondary benefit that may be even more important. Since asking demonstrates a willingness to learn, a desire to serve, and a humility that can be an inspiration for the entire organization." (p. 24). The end results? Marilee Adams notes:

Organizations that ask questions will be
more dynamic, agile, collaborative, and creative. (p. 30)

Good questions energize people (p. 37). As we become leaders as coaches, our focus becomes empowering others which in turn moves the entire enterprise forward. Our role is more focused on alignment. Julie Giulione suggests:

If leaders could choose just one super-power,
I would recommend cultivating the ability to ask
great, meaty, engaging, thought-provoking questions. (p. 43)

How?

A great starting point is thinking about engagement. Let's call the below instrument an engagement tachometer, with four engagement levels:

Tachometer level 0                 
Tachometer level 600-700
Tachometer level 1000-4000
Tachometer level 4000-6000+

Our first tachometer level provides no engagement since this is where we are simply telling others what, when, or how to do things. The second level is much like an automobile at idle, the car is running but not moving. This happens when we ask passive questions generating little if any engagement. A telltale sign of a passive question is one that may be simply answered with a yes, no, or o.k. Our third level, with broad engagement possibilities, consists of active questions; questions that require pausing, thinking and active listening. Our fourth, genuinely transformative level begins with highly engaging or empowering questions and reflects a genuinely open and safe environment cultivated by a leader as coach.

The authors found four primary reasons we have difficulty with questions (p. 53):

1. We avoid questions out of a natural desire to protect ourselves.
2. We are too often in a rush.
3. We often lack skills in asking or answering questions due to a lack of experiences and opportunities, of training, and of role models.
4. We find ourselves in corporate cultures and working environments that discourage questions, especially those that challenge existing assumptions and policies.

Many managers or SMEs are poor at delegation. Yet, when we use questions, we should not be sharing just information but also responsibility (p. 58). This suggests we take our time forming our questions. The authors inform us (p. 69) this is contextual: What do I want my question to accomplish? Replace evaluation with curiosity. Empowering questions help develop alignment within teams and draw out the optimum performance from individual members and the team as a whole (p. 71). On page 77 the authors provide examples of good open-ended questions:

What do you think about?
Could you say more about?
What possibilities come to mind? What might happen if you?
What have you tried before?
What do you want to do next?

Marilee Adams refers to two types of mindsets that may reside in the questioner: learner and judger (p. 88). How about this? Let's think of coach and evaluator, respectively, from our prior two feedback profiles. The learner term is both operative and powerful. The authors explain: Asking questions as a part of a learning process rather than a judging exercise (p. 93). Retaining the learner, or coaching mindset, is key to performance breakthrough. When we continuously listen in pursuit of learning more, good questions organically flow leading to engagement and creative ideas.

Application | Guidelines

Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas (in remembrance) note that "telling creates resistance, whereas asking creates relationships." (p. 128) Much like Kouzes and Posner's conclusion that leadership is about relationships. The authors cite humanist psychologist Carl Rogers, who notes three conditions -- genuineness, empathic understanding, and positive regard -- are necessary if we are to help change the person we are with (p. 131).

According to Virginia Bianco-Mathis (p. 150), the leader who coaches with questions sees the team as having an independent existence in its own right, serving a larger organizational purpose. Exhibit 8.1 (pp. 151-152) shows that a Coaching Leader's Behaviors with Team are:

• Focused on expanding and facilitating.
• Holding self and team accountable for initiating actions.
• Facilitating acting with speed and flexibility; pushing for creative solutions.
• Consulting with team regarding problems and solutions.
• Establishing a partnership with the team.
• Sharing knowledge and information.
• Trying to lead and plan for change collaboratively. 

Summary                                             

As we continue growing into leaders as coaches, our priorities become generating alignment, creating a motivational environment, and developing the next generation of leaders.

“We become what we ask about.” (p. 203) 

Thank you, Bob Tiede, for the signed copy of your book.

Coaching Story | Leaders Prioritize Effectiveness

On day three of an Academy Leadership Excellence Course our first workshop focuses on Setting Leadership Priorities.

One of the more interesting exercises is based on Stephen Covey Urgency/Important quadrant chart, whereby course participants evaluate what activities tend to dominate their time.

At the beginning of the exercise, many participants not only find that many of their activities are in Quadrant 1, the attendees frequently seem to believe that being busy or attending to “fire drills” is actually a good thing. We often emphasize efficiency (or how to do something) rather that effectiveness (what should we be doing). Likewise, many genuine Quadrant 1 activities are often initially listed in Quadrant 2. With many groups, activities initially placed in Quadrant 2 are not opportunistic, energizing or motivating. Of course, this is an indicator many professionals are caught up in ordinary day to day events, with little or no priority given to things that may lead to breakthrough results. 

In a recent coaching session, it was abundantly clear this Quadrant exercise left quite an impression on a course attendee.

Right away the client shared that she wants to spend more time in Quadrant 2, and that she was noticing that her role had changed upon returning from maternity leave.

She mentioned that her new role and perspective made her feel weird, even creating an identity crisis. We talked about this for awhile and the question came up “What can I do differently in this new role, how can I be more of a strategist?” Great question. It made me think about the essence of good coaching and how asking questions is a hallmark of becoming a leader as coach.

“Why not ask your questions from inside Quadrant 2?” 

was the answer we came up with. Look at the activities inside Quadrant 2. If the majority of our questions tie to creativity, relationship building and learning, we’ll be challenging our teams to get outside of their comfort zone, creating an innovative and energizing team.

New roles requires new focus and new questions to ask.

Let’s Lead by Prioritizing Efffectiveness.