Tag Archives: leadership

Expect The Best – You Might Just Get It

by on August 2, 2007 in Work

For anyone in the process of building or re-engaging a workteam, setting expectations and the right tone for what’s acceptable behavior is vital for healthy cohesion. Rather than establishing ground rules, Tammy Lenski suggests creating group norms.

Group norms are co-created, with time for consideration (instead of an exercise to be gotten through) and updated as the team’s interactions grow organically over time. Group norms suggest, “This is what we believe will help create robust dialogue in our group,” while ground rules suggest, “Don’t violate these rules or you’re not a team player.” Group norms are an invitation, ground rules an order.

The problem with ground rules is that they present a false sense of control. As Tammy notes, “Just because someone tells you never to interrupt in a stressful meeting, does that mean you can magically stop?” Even more troublesome is that ground rules automatically presume that there will be problems (gasp…perhaps conflict) that will require a set of rules to resolve.

Tammy shares a few of her favorite norms that you can use to kickstart the process of introducing group norms to your workteam. Here are two that I like:

  • Curiosity is always welcomed. Ask questions born out of genuine curiosity and the desire to understand the other’s perspective.
  • It’s OK to disagree. You don’t need to share another’s thinking about everything we talk about. How you challenge will can the difference between stubborn debate and real dialogue.

Creating an organically evolving set of group norms signals an expectation that everyone is bringing their best to the team.

From Joining To Belonging In Organizations

by on June 3, 2007 in Work

A fine bottle of wine single-malt scotch needs to make it’s way to Jamie Notter for keeping me informed about all the juicy items in the Harvard Business Review. Once upon a time, I had a subscription and it was one of the best professional development investments I made. Which begs a question of…why don’t I subscribe now?

Anyway, back to Jamie and a recent article he brings to light, which focuses on the power of conversation in our working life. Poet David Whyte notes that most executives are hungry for a “larger language” that cuts through all the typical corporate bs that passes for communication. If you regularly play buzzword bingo during company meetings and win several times over, you understand what this type of shallow language is.

Jamie highlights a paragraph from the article that bears highlighting again, if for no other reason than to focus on one particular word: belong.

At the executive and managerial levels, work is almost always conversation in one form or another, and yet we spend almost no time apprenticing ourselves to the disciplines necessary for holding real exchanges. That’s partly because they involve a great deal of self-knowledge and a willingness to study how human beings try to belong—skills we hope our strategic abilities will help us get by without.

What is so compelling about the notion of belonging? And how can our daily language foster a greater sense of belonging – not only for ourselves but others around us?

When I worked in the non-profit association world, I witnessed the potential of belonging in a professional setting. When an actual spirit of belonging is present, it’s a dynamic and inspiring thing to behold. It not only energizes the individual, it invigorates the group. Yet, all too often, we get the agreement to join and stop there. Joining is the easy part. Cultivating a spirit of belonging takes work, preparation, and, as David Whyte notes, a willingness to curiously study what it means to belong to your group, your set of shared values, and your organization.

If you’re a manager or a team lead, what can you do to foster a sense of belonging in members of your group? Consider that each person has their own need for belonging and it’s your responsibility to figure out what this is. It goes beyond the question of why they’re working in your organization. It gets more to the relationship connecting the employee and their work. We don’t want to belong to something we don’t believe in; rather, we want to belong to something that truly matters to us.

Ask yourself…why would someone want to belong to your workgroup? Your department? Your organization? Taking the job and joining a company is the easy part. Helping someone truly belong to their work is where the power is.

What are you doing today to cultivate a sense of belonging?

Mentors Are Everywhere

by on March 1, 2007 in Career

Even though I’m technically out of the non-profit association world, I still like to check in frequently with friends and other folks who keep this vital area of our working world moving. Over at the association for association professionals (ASAE) they have a blog called Acronym. To work in associations is to understand why this particular blog name is rather clever and playful.

A couple of days ago, Lisa Junker noted an interview with Howard Gardner in the March 2007 Harvard Business Review where he talks about the influence of an anti-mentor. Gardner describes anti-mentors as “potential role models who had been unkind to their employees or who had shown behavior that others would not want to emulate.”

Lisa writes:

This struck a chord with me, and as I consider the idea, I’m surprised to realize how much of my personal management style has been shaped not by the good examples but by the bad ones. Many things I strive to do as a manager—like moving heaven and earth to do a review on time, or providing constructive feedback immediately when needed (in a private setting) instead of letting issues fester, to give just two examples—came about because I’ve seen the atmosphere that can be created when these basic things don’t happen.

Which prompted Lisa to ask: “What lessons can you thank your anti-mentors for?”

There’s quite a lot to consider in her question. The first is that, as employees, we are capable of being grateful for the examples of lousy management. Within that, there’s a certain release that from being in a less-than-optimal professional relationship. And we also gain a greater sense of control when we can acknowledge our own learning in these situations. This doesn’t excuse shoddy management practices and certainly nothing that creates toxic work environments, but by taking time to consider how situations of anti-mentorship are contributing to our own growth, we can turn some of this pain and discomfort to our own advantage. If nothing else, it teaches us we need to get the hell out of that organization as fast as humanly possible.

I also realize that it’s not quite as easy to throw my former managers and colleagues into the two separate buckets of mentors and anti-mentors. Each of them have their strengths as well as their flaws – all of which have contributed to my own practice of being a manager and leader. In our not quite so black and white world, it seems more appropriate to consider our past managers as human beings who have a mixed bag of qualities.

And rather than thinking we have to have it all together before we can possibly mentor someone, John West encourages us to just do it and do it now.

If Leadership Was A Punctuation Mark, What Would It Be?

by on February 27, 2007 in Work

Ever work for someone who thought leadership was defined by an exclamation point? Ever get confused by your own leadership style and whether you should get folks to follow you through a series of statements ending with periods? Is there a reason I’m beginning this post using only question marks? Hmmm?

We can get caught up in the notion that a leader has to be commanding…commanding in a sense where you’re slinging around words, phrases, and sentences ending with an exclamation point (my daughter likes to call them ‘shoutty marks’). It might sound something like this:

“Bailey! Come here! And explain to me why our customer is pissed off!!!”

Or perhaps, more often, we simply issue those commands with a bit more subtlety. Something like:

“Chris. Please come to my office and tell me what’s going on with our customer.”

Another option? Yep. How about using that wonderful creation, the question mark?

“Chris? What happened to make this customer so angry? And what’s your plan for making this right?

The first option isn’t going to win you any leader-of-the-year awards while the second might get you an honorable mention. The third one, though, leads to the gold medal round. The key is to get curious, which isn’t always easy or even the first thing we think of doing when something important is on the line.

Ask…is there something to learn here? And not just for you, but the folks you lead. By asking questions, you’re helping them learn from their own experiences. What may seem like an initial failure can turn into new opportunities. Use open questions (those that don’t lead directly to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer).

Finally, all of this isn’t to say there are not times when every leader must emphasize their words with an exclamation point or nudge folks with a period. It’s just important to remember that questions are an essential part of a leader’s repertoire.

It’s About The Relationship, Stupid

by on February 16, 2007 in Work

Today, Management-Issues comments on a recent report produced by Robert Half International and CareerBuilder.com which says that employees trust their manager more than their senior executives. Yep. Not a lot of surprises there. Just consider the number of interactions between an employee’s manager compared to their VP or CEO. Put to a ratio, it’s going to lean heavily in the direction of the employee’s manager. This is the failing of the traditional organizational hierarchy and there is no cure for this problem until that wonderful little thing called the org chart shifts from vertical to horizontal.

The old, old-school mindset of command and control is always about getting other people to do what you want them to do. If your organization’s still hung up on this old chestnut, how’s it working out for you? Employees don’t want to do what their boss says to do. After all, is their boss on the phone with a customer who needs a solution to their problem now? No, most employees (or at least the ones you want to keep around) want to do what they need to do to get things done. They need to know that their manager AND their executives understand this and are willing to do whatever it takes to support this initiative. This involves the element of trust and the only way you gain and share trust is through a strong relationship. Which means that most of our corporate executives need to get out from behind their desks, open up some of the time on their calendar normally reserved for meeting with the media, corporate partners, etc., and visit their employees.

Here are three common reservations that executives have:

I’m too busy running the organization or my part of the organization. No kidding. So is everyone else in the company. Think that your call center staff is just sitting around with nothing to do? Think your marketing team hones their solitaire playing skills on company time? Then, you definitely need to visit. More than likely, you’ll find that they’re busy helping you run the organization, as well.

And here’s the kicker: it doesn’t need to be an all-day marathon task. It can take as little as five minutes. Rosa Say has a great model called the Daily Five which is well worth learning and building into your schedule.

I’m (secretly) scared of what I might find. Yeah, it might be painful to hear about the challenges of the day-to-day work. You might find that your employees don’t respect you. It’s called feedback and can help you grow. Some day it might actually save your job.

I don’t need to visit…that’s why I have management. Your department heads and junior management can’t replace you. If you strive to be a leader, be a visible leader. Else, you’re merely a puppet master using your managers to initiate commands.

And don’t rely on your junior management to build rapport for you. Middle management is always in an awkward position and it’s only made harder when the senior executives and ground staff don’t have good relationships. If your employees trust you as CEO, then they’re far less likely to go to their immediate supervisor and complain that the latest initiative from headquarters is full of shit. If they know you and trust you, they’ll either try to understand and move on or feel free to tell you directly that it’s shit. That’s the kind of frankness that every manager should strive for, right?

No one ever said that building relationships was easy. But here’s the thing: strong , open relationships are not just the glue of today’s organizations, they are the lubricant. Friction is a fact of life whenever you put two people together. That friction only multiplies when adding more and more individuals to the group. But relationships built on honest communications and trust keep the inner workings moving smoothly instead of grinding to a halt.