Gifted Leaders

Why Traditional Feedback Doesn’t Work

Leaders can change their own behavior or influence that of other people by focusing on creating new behaviors rather than trying to fix old ones. Leaders can make a difference by eliciting attention on only the most important things and focusing their feedback to employees on things that work well. – Ray B. Williams in Psychology Today, April 2009

In a recent blog post, Ray Williams advises that "Focusing on solutions and not problems, allowing employees to generate solutions, and developing new positive behaviors become a critical management strategy to increase success."

Charles Jacobs, author of Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn’t Work and Other Supervisory Lessons From the Latest Brain Science, says the brain is wired to resist what is commonly termed "constructive feedback", but is usually negative. When people encounter information that is in conflict with their self image, their tendency is to change the information rather than changing themselves. So when managers give critical feedback to employees, the employees' brain defense mechanism is activated because that information conflicts with what the brain remembers and knows.

Jacobs's views are supported by management guru Aubrey C. Daniels. He cites a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) which found that 90% of performance appraisals are both painful and don’t work. They produce an extremely low percentage of top performers.

So clearly, the way we’ve been doing things is not particularly effective.  The alternative? Try using a coaching approach. Gifted Leaders can help you change your ways!

The Ripple Effect of Great Coaching

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. - Frederick Buechner

Think about someone in your life who had a positive impact on you, encouraged your development, or maybe challenged you to go beyond where you thought you could go. Whether you knew it or not at the time, you were on the receiving end of some great coaching. Undoubtedly, many others are also benefiting from that person’s investment in you, so great coaching can have a significant ripple effect.

So what does great coaching actually look like? Research from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great revealed that leaders in great companies share the following practices. They …

• Let the truth be heard and “confront reality”
• Lead with questions, not answers
• Engage in dialogue, not coercion
• Conduct autopsies (reviews of mistakes, failures or missed goals) without blame

Coaching skills are what help these leaders do all of these things. Here’s a checklist, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies to help you self assess your own coaching skills. Give yourself a rating from 1 (low) to 5 (high) for each item. When coaching …

1. I am a role model for behaviors I expect from team members.
2. I am alert and focused on the other person.
3. I listen more than I talk.
4. I pay full attention when I listen.
5. I promote discovery for others by asking purposeful questions.
6. I encourage problem solving by asking rather than telling.
7. I convey important messages concisely and clearly.
8. I notice and point out positive things in others.
9. I check to make sure that the intent behind my actions or words is conveyed.
10. I invite feedback from others.

What do your scores tell you? What are your current strengths? What areas could you improve in to become more effective as a leader?

Questions That Sustain Your Leadership

Judge a person by their questions, rather than their answers. – Voltaire

Check out Questions That Sustain Your Leadership on giantimpact.com including a nice summary on the value of questions.

Everybody thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

We all have to start by working on ourselves.  From the article, here are some suggested questions to ask yourself:

1. Am I Investing in Myself? This question probes your commitment to personal growth. An empty glass won't refresh anyone. Before you can influence others, you need to contain something worth offering to others.
   
2. Am I Genuinely Interested In Others? It's essential to regularly question your motives. There's a fine line between manipulation and motivation. The former moves people for personal benefit, while the latter moves people for mutual gain.
3. Am I Doing What I Love and Loving What I Do? This question determines passion. If you go to work only to fulfill processes and functions then you're in jeopardy of losing your humanity and turning into a machine. Passion gives you an edge by endowing you with more energy than others have.
4. Am I Taking Others to a Higher Level? As a leader, you're in the people development business. By adding value to those you lead, you're investing in men and women with the potential to multiply your influence exponentially.
   
5. Am I Taking Care of Today? How you treat today speaks volumes about your likelihood of success. What are your priorities? The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

The great artist, Pablo Picasso, once remarked, "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." Regardless of your technical skill or relational charm, you'll be inhibited as a leader until you learn the art of asking questions.

Three Universal Human Needs – The 3 E’s

By exceptionality I mean that every human being is an exception to the rule - no one has ever been born quite like you and no one in the future will ever again be quite like you. We all have a basic human desire for essentiality, we want to be recognized as essential to any human group we belong to. Finally, I think all human beings in every group they are a part of feel some sense of equality, especially equality of voice. We all have a desire to share without censorship, our hopes and visions of the true, the good and the possible. - David Cooperrider

Here’s a bit more on the 3 E’s from the Thin Book Publishing web site:

Several management theorists have identified three human universal needs. We share David Cooperrider's view. He believes that each person has the need to:

1. Have a voice and be heard;
2. Be viewed as essential to a group; and
3. Be seen as unique and exceptional.

We've found when people in organizations become frustrated or cynical, it is always because the organization is not fully respectful of the three universal human needs. In our experience, most organizations will tell you they practice these principles, but in reality they do not. They are deceptively simple. You can make a difference by monitoring who you listen to and who you ignore and asking yourself why. What assumptions have you made about people or their positions that cause you to listen or tune out?

One person can begin to change the culture of his or her organization because honoring the three human universals begins with you. You can make a difference in creating a more constructive culture at your organization by:

• Being curious about how every other person sees the world;
  
• Respecting each person's perspective of the world as unique and essential to the group's success; and
  
• Making sure every person has a chance to speak and be heard.

Ultimately, if you ensure all three needs are met, you will be successful as a leader. If your organization works at meeting all three needs, your organization will be more successful.

Investment Advice: Pay Attention to Soft Skills

Organization culture is driven by leaders. Leadership is successful only when leaders are open to new information, new configurations of information and the willingness to apply that to decisions and actions. - Sue Annis Hammond

In a recent e-Newsletter, Hammond commented that organizational culture is "the softest of the soft concepts" and therefore rarely gets respect in business schools. This is a huge oversight since poor organizational cultures are to blame for the recent collapse of companies like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

Bottom line: If arrogance and hubris are at the top of an organization, it will ultimately fail. Her advice is that "If you want to invest in a company, find out how the leaders of the organization behave." Here are a couple of questions to consider:

1. Do top leaders exhibit admirable behavior that honors the 3 human universal needs (everyone is unique, essential and exceptional)?
2. Do they demonstrate humility, openness to learning, and a willingness to admit a mistake and do something different?

It's that simple. If the leaders do not behave this way, don't buy the stock. Sooner or later, that inept leadership will destroy the business.

How do you stack up as a leader? How would others answer these questions about you?

You Have to Engage to Engage

Try not to be a person of success, but a person of value. - Albert Einstein

Few people would dispute the value of employee engagement in the workplace. According to Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership, the challenge is that employee engagement and inclusion isn’t a cognitive issue, it's an emotional issue.

The overriding theme of studies on employee engagement is "a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort." And all studies, all locations, and all ages agreed that the direct relationship with one’s manager is the strongest driver of employee engagement.

Here’s where Einstein’s advice applies ...

The problem is that we, as managers and leaders, want employees to be engaged and feel included, but we ourselves are detached, distracted, disengaged, and focused on our own "To Do" lists. If we want others to bring that elusive, coveted "discretionary effort" in the door with them, then we had better make the time to engage in the kind of conversations that could enrich our relationship with them.

How can you engage to engage?

The Top 7 Steps to Develop Leadership Skills

As someone who has devoted much of his life to the study of leaders, I find myself talking about transparency and trust whenever I talk about leadership. - Warren Bennis

In his online article by the same title, author Akhil Shahani says that successful management requires more than just assigning tasks to the team. It calls for a leader who can inspire team members to achieve their full potential. Here’s Shahani’s checklist:

1. Test the waters: Find out what people think about your style of leadership. This could be a real eye opener, and the key to making changes to become more effective. Ask for feedback from your team members and peers. A relaxed and open environment will help draw out their honest opinion.
2. Listen hard: GREAT LEADERS ARE GREAT LISTENERS!!!!!
3. Connect: Take complete responsibility for how you are heard. Effective communication is a fine art and takes practice.
4. Be a people’s person: Learn to respect your team’s capabilities. Let team members make decisions. Trust them with their work; don’t be a watchdog.
5. Lead by example: Your team must believe that you really mean what you say. Be prepared to put your money where your mouth is.
6. Share leadership: Distribute tasks and responsibilities among group members based on  individual strengths. You become a better leader by involving more people in the leadership process.
7. Evaluate your success in tandem with that of the team: Focus on building their skills as this will enhance motivation and team performance. Remember, their success is yours too!

Which of these steps will you focus on to improve as a leader?

The Entrepreneurial Spirit and Your Career

All I would tell people is to hold onto what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You’ve got to find it on your own terms. - Harrison Ford

In the September 2009 Leading News e-Newsletter, Marshall Goldsmith talks about the importance of being entrepreneurial in how we each approach our own careers. Here are some of his suggestions:

1. Love What You Do. Years of hard work (which generally precede success) don’t seem so hard if you are doing what you love.
2. Be Curious. Always be open to learning and on the look-out for potential opportunities.
3. Find Your Own Market Niche. You can work to develop a special competency that differentiates you from everyone else. Be creative. Look for market needs that everyone else may not have considered. Anyone can do what everyone else is doing. Great entrepreneurs provide products and services that are better or different than what everyone else is doing. You can also do this at your present job: What should be done that isn't?
4. Become a World Expert. As intimidating as this sounds, achieving serious "world-class" expertise may not be as daunting as you might believe. If you pick a reasonably narrow area of specialization, focus on it, and learn as much as you can, you will start to accumulate serious knowledge within a few years. While you can never become the world authority on everything, you can definitely become a world authority on one thing.
5. Learn from the Best. As you ponder your career options, ask yourself: "Who do I want to be like in 10 years?" or "Who are the world's experts in fields that are related to my desired area of expertise?" Try to learn from these people's lives. You may be surprised. Some may even go out of their way to help you.
6. Build Your Own Brand. Peter Drucker once told me that companies should be able to 'put their mission statement on a T-shirt.' The same can be true for individuals. For example, my own mission is to be the world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, lasting change in behavior. Your customers (or employers) will respect you more if you do not pretend to know everything about everything but instead have a unique brand.
7. Pay the Price. It is possible that you may just get lucky and become incredibly successful without having to work very hard. Don't count on it. The successful entrepreneurs - and the successful people - who I know work very hard. The "luck" that they experience is often impacted by the years of effort that have prepared them to take advantage of fortuitous opportunities.

How can you be more entrepreneurial in how you approach your career?

Self-Connection = Fulfilled Potential

What a long time it can take to become the person one has always been!  How often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own.  How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity - the true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation. – Parker J. Palmer

In his book, Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer explains that vocation does not come from a voice 'out there' calling us to become something we are not.  It comes from a voice 'in here' calling us to be the person we were born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given to us at birth by God.

Heady stuff to be sure but a recent European consulting study underscores the importance of this idea of being connected to our truer selves in the workplace. Krauthammer International, a consultancy-based training and coaching company, recently reported that the more "self-connected" employees are at work, the better their performance. Interestingly, 66% of employees believe that they need to connect with themselves to fulfill their potential but 33% are not confident that they know themselves.

What opportunities to you have to develop greater self-awareness for yourself and the people you work with?

Who’s Got Your Back? - Part II

“The more I work on my own life and help others on the path toward success the more I see the importance of loving relationships.” - Dan Miller

Here are several other quotes from Dan Miller's e-Newsletter on the importance of supportive relationships:

“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.” - Samuel Johnson

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” - Henri Nouwen

“Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.” - Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859

What are you doing to keep your friendships/relationships “in constant repair?”