Monthly Archives: November 2011

What We Can Learn from Sports

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Having grown up with 2 older brothers, one of whom wrote my essay, which gained me entry into the Yale University seminar “Sports in Contemporary Society” taught by Howard Cosell (Yes, I got 3 Yale course credits for this!), I often compare work teams to sports teams. For example, compare the current Redskins and the Patriots. Now mind you, while I am from New England, I’ve never been a Patriots fan. But Bill Belichick knows how to build a team. And whether you like Tom Brady or not (or simply envy him for Gisele), he doesn’t wait for coach to keep people in line. Brady is known for going right into the locker room and giving direct feedback to his teammates who aren’t pulling their load (a key to effective self managed teams). And while Albert Haynesworth’s image frequented the Washington Post topic quite often last year, I would bet his image was far less common in the Boston Globe this year.

If Haynesworth got petulant and refused to practice for Belichick, neither Belichick nor his players would put up with it! Belichick tried to make it work, as apparently did Haynesworth, yet had no trouble making the tough decision, after only 8 games, to let Haynesworth go (an important leadership decision).

So whether you agree or not with my sports analogy, here are a few indicators of a special team: engaged team members, results oriented conversations, meetings with clear objectives, and lots more “we” and “our” than “I” and “my”.

The Silent Leader

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As many solo practitioners do, I frequent my Starbucks often. The Starbucks staff knows me by name, my drink, my paper, and what I eat.  When I walk in, my drink is often already prepared (a couple of times, when I wanted something different, they had to throw out the one they made). On my writing days, Starbucks is often my haunt. That’s how I got to observe Larry, the manager of this Starbucks. I call him a “quiet” leader.

All you need to do is watch him to see he has the full respect of his staff. They ask him for help, make suggestions for improvement and joke around with him. He listens, he encourages, he corrects. Once I heard him give very direct corrective feedback to an employee, firmly, clearly and respectfully. The employee didn’t even get defensive.

I have never heard him complain when he looks exhausted in the morning. The employees don’t seem to either. I’ve frequently seen him giving staff positive feedback. You can tell that he expects fine performance and his staff know it too. He doesn’t use a lot of words – he doesn’t need to. He walks the talk. No big gap between what he does and what he asks for from his staff.

How do I know they respect him? When he is onsite, they act no differently than when he’s not. They don’t complain. They joke with him. They watch him and listen to him. They offer ideas. And he listens. Leading doesn’t have to be complicated nor based on eloquent verbiage. It’s all in the behavior. The leader’s behavior and, the staff’s as well.

What Makes A Team Truly A Team?

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I was consulting to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company who wanted me to help him to get his group of senior execs act like a team. He mentioned that one of the execs on the team had a stellar team that put his senior exec team to shame. He wanted me to observe both to see if I could discern what made them so different. First thing on a Monday morning, I settled into a chair in the back of the room. Of the 7 execs, 4 were on time. They waited about 10 minutes or so for the others to get there before they began. During the meeting, 3 of them were busy manipulating their blackberries and Iphones. The CEO was tapping his foot, signaling that the meeting was taking too long. No one was monitoring the agenda (I later learned there wasn’t one!) nor did anyone call others on their inappropriate behaviors. One exec never said a word (and no one ever asked him anything) while another droned on forever — with no one making the effort to cut him off (yet several managed to roll their eyes in displeasure). When I later inquired as to the meeting objective, the CEO told me that the group liked having unstructured weekly meetings to stay in touch with each other. Not sure they succeeded.

Several hours later, I walked down a couple of floors with one of the VPs from the prior meeting to observe his team’s weekly meeting. As we entered the room, the meeting was underway. The energy was lively, people were brainstorming. One team member was up at the white board capturing people’s comments while another was drawing images of the comments being made. Meeting objectives were posted on one wall, ground rules on another.

In addition to the high energy level, team members all monitored each other. When one team member repeated his points, another let him know they “got it”. When another pushed her point relentlessly, rather than argue with her, someone asked her more questions. When one obviously tangential point was made, one team member asked the comment maker to take that part of the discussion offline. Every step of the way, the group self managed, focusing on the objective and the specific results directly related to it.

Some of you would probably think the decorum could have been improved — people interrupted each other, spoke loudly, cajoled and challenged each other (I’m not objective on this; everyone in my New York family just talks louder than the next to get heard). Most noticeable to me, was the frequent use of the word “our”. Team members asked each other: “How will that support our objective?” and “How will that work to our advantage?” and “Is that truly in our best interest?” It’s important to note that the use of the word “we” like “our” rather than “I” is considered (and empirically proven to be) an indicator of commitment, whether to a couple, a team or an organization.

Masterful Meetings – Part I

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Many people think that running a great meeting is simply a matter of tightly keeping to a well-constructed agenda. Masterful meetings also include: (1) thoughtful meeting preparation; (2) the creation of a safe and open meeting environment; (3) full participation of attendees and, (4) the effective management of challenging behaviors that take meetings off track.

This first post on meetings addresses strategies to engage the full participation of meeting attendees.

Tips for Engagement:

Step I: Who to Invite: If you want your meeting attendees to be fully engaged, make sure you pick the right ones to attend. Given your meeting objectives, who are the appropriate people to attend? Who has the expertise in the topic area? The interest?

Step II: How to Invite: When you invite these attendees to the meeting, tell them why their participation would be important at the meeting; this lets them know that you believe they add unique value to the meeting. Ask them, in light of these objectives, if they have any suggestions for the agenda.

Step III: How to Prepare Attendees: Prior to the meeting, give attendees a “heads up” that you will be asking them to introduce themselves and share what is most important to them about the meeting goals and content. That way, you are giving introverts some notice so they can reflect and think carefully about what they want to say prior to the meeting rather than be put on the spot at the meeting.

Step IV: How to Manage the Start of the Meeting: At the meeting, when you ask attendees to share what is important to them, make sure you let them know how much time they will have and make sure they stay within that time slot. That allows everyone know you will make sure airtime is properly managed, sometimes helping people feel less reticent to talk if they are concerned about their time. This also lets them know you are in control of the meeting.

Meeting “starts” are important for two reasons: One, early interaction and participation set the tone for further interaction and participation. Once people get passive in meeting, they tend to stay passive. Two, attendees are observing the facilitator and whether she or he is going to keep the meeting on track and involve and manage participation. Early on, attendees decide whether the meeting will be well managed.

Step V: Listen Well: Track what is important to participants so that when their particular interests get raised during the meeting, you can bring these into the conversation.

Step VI: Build in Reflection Time: That reassures meeting attendees that airtime will be properly managed, sometimes helping them feel less reticent to talk. This also lets them know you are in control of the meeting

Step VII: How to Manage Silence and Disengagement: If no one responds to your questions, don’t assume they have nothing to say about the issue. Assume they either need time to think about their response or they aren’t comfortable sharing for a myriad of reasons.

One strategy I use all the time when people are either quiet or disengaged, is to break them up into small groups for a few minutes and ask each group to discuss a particular item. Some may be more comfortable speaking in a smaller group especially because their thoughts are not identifiable to everyone in the room. If any of the topics are sensitive, think carefully about which attendees go into which groups (and with whom) so that they are in groups in which they feel comfortable speaking.

If you notice some participants who still appear disengaged, check in with them at meeting breaks, ask them how they think the meeting is going. Ask them their opinion on what was just discussed and then reinforce their ideas, encouraging them to share these at the meeting.

Step VIII: Use Interactive Methodology: To keep attendees engaged in a longer meeting, use creative methods for some of the agenda items to juice it up: a debate, a role-play, a case, a guest speaker.

If everyone appears to agree on a topic, ask someone to play “devil’s advocate.” This ensures that other perspectives get out on the table by safely structuring the role of dissenter. This also gets the group to consider what obstacles it might face should it go ahead with its initial plan.

Step IX: Food and Fun: Snacks always seem to lighten the mood of meetings. And a little humor and even a squishy ball or two go a long way in making attendees more comfortable.

Stay Tuned for Part II on Masterful Meetings – “Managing Challenging Meeting Behaviors”!

The Top Three Leadership Challenges for Today’s Leaders and What to Do About Them

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Based on my review of current leadership research and best practices, combined with my own 23 years of consulting experience with senior leaders, I identified three critical challenges for today’s senior leaders. These include: (1) leader discomfort with “not knowing”; (2) limited upward communication and, (3) the lack of, or an ineffective, succession-planning process.

Discomfort with “Not Knowing”
Some leaders consistently refrain from risk-taking, even when it is well planned and thought through, often due to their personal discomfort and fear. Others take the opposite approach and neither hesitate to take risks nor request input from others on a systematic basis. In both cases, these leaders are often perceived as inauthentic and inaccessible because of their unwillingness to ask for help, to “not know”, to show transparency and to show interest in the ideas of others. This willingness to be wrong, once considered the death of leaders, paradoxically gains them great respect from their staff. The more comfortable leaders are with their skills, knowledge, experience and perhaps most important judgment, the more likely they are to demonstrate transparency and vulnerability. Ironically, in the tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the Emperor’s unwillingness to be wrong led to far more vulnerability on his part, i.e., his nakedness! The Emperor’s unwillingness to be wrong also impacted everyone; only a young child spoke the truth of the Emperor’s nakedness while everyone else silenced his or her perceptions. Similarly, unsure and insecure leadership behaviors often bring out those same behaviors in their staff. Strategies to build leader comfort with not having all the answers include: requesting feedback, developing transparency and getting coaching in emotional intelligence skills.

Limited Upward Communication
A second central challenge for leaders is their lack of pulse on what staff in their organization thinks and feels. Leaders who are not open to debate, feedback or different ways of thinking are likely to be seriously blindsided by critical information. The key to hearing from staff is creating and nurturing an organizational culture that values and reinforces different ways of thinking, grounded risk-taking and learning from others.  Critical strategies leaders can employ to encourage upward communication include: active listening, showing curiosity, being transparent and authentic and, engaging staff in projects and discussions.

Succession-Planning
Given the current economic downturn, coupled with the beginning of the retirement of baby boomers, organizations without effective succession programs are in great jeopardy. Of those programs that do exist, many are deficient because of their lack of alignment with business strategy and organizational vision as well as their limited focus on replacing only senior leaders. Highly effective succession-planning programs must: (1) be aligned with business strategy; (2) address all managerial positions as well as all highly specialized/technical positions; (3) formally identify high potential candidates and offer them talent management. Frequent assessment of the organization’s strategy and vision too will help continually ensure the alignment of these programs with changing organizational needs and goals.

Summary
When leaders learn to accept their “not knowing” and more frequently engage with staff, they send the message that they too are human and have much to learn from others. That message alone, if matched by congruent leader behaviors, can positively affect staff motivation, commitment and even performance. Finally, an effective succession-planning program must be comprehensive and integrated in order to have real organization impact.

Leveraging Workplace Conflict

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Given the increased complexity of today’s technological, political and economic environment, one must not only prevent and resolve conflict but also, leverage it to enhance creativity and innovation at work.

Once dysfunctional conflict occurs between individuals or groups (e.g., control battles), working relationships and processes often break down. Each person or group creates stories about the other that are often inaccurate and based on his or her own view of the world.

So how do you make conflict functional and useful and build on differences to enhance work relationships and positively impact organizational effectiveness?

  1. Active Listening: Don’t think about what you have to say next, or nod your head understandingly while thinking about your “to do” list, but really truly get curious. What is this person thinking? Experiencing? Worried about? What must that be like for him or her?
  2. Unhook!: To unhook, you first have to know that you are hooked (feeling reactive) and then how to unhook yourself.
    Let’s just say that you are finding another person or group antagonistic. What can you do? Ask yourself if this is really about you. In most cases, it’s not. Ask yourself what is the person or group truly worried about? Then take a deep breath, settle into your chair and imagine shaking off the antagonism. Try to empathize with their concerns. Repeat them back to the person or group and then ask if you “got” their concerns and always, always say: “Tell Me More”  – the 3 simple words that can create a communication breakthrough!
    If you can’t stop reacting, ask for a break before you say something you will regret. Before you break, make sure you set a specific time to regroup. Make the effort to come back calmer and more neutral. Focus on the goal you are trying to achieve.
  3. Move to Interests: Ask questions about what is most important to them. Here are some questions that work for me: “What would you most like? What would that look like? How would that serve you or your organization? How do you think I can help you?”
  4. Share Your Interests: If others truly feel listened to, they will be likely to return the favor and listen to you. If they don’t, offer your thoughts in a clear, neutral, non-accusatory way. Don’t focus on your desired end results (your position) but WHY you want what you want (your underlying interests). Discussing positions rather than interests often exacerbates the conflict because people tend to get into black and white thinking, believing that only one party can get his/her way.
  5.  Explore Options: Introduce the idea of a “Third Way”, – a possible option in which both parties can meet their underlying interests with a little creativity. Invite them to brainstorm (remember no critiquing) options. Don’t stop at 2-3 ideas. Sitting through lulls during brainstorming can lead to paradigmatic shifts and brilliant ideas. Make sure to separate inventing from deciding and have fun generating crazy ideas.
  6. Create Win-Wins: Together group the options, analyze their costs and benefits and agree on one that meets both of your interests. Or incorporate pieces of different options to create a unique Win-Win. Remember, the final option is unlikely to look exactly like either of your initially desired end results (and that’s a good thing!).