Click here to watch Deliberate Practice: 4 Steps to Enhancing Your Influence
Being influential requires deliberate practice, discipline and hard work. The good news, we communicate 24/7 every day. Therefore, we have unlimited opportunities to enhance our level of influence every day. This video will share with you four practical and immediate ways you can begin practicing today to grow your influence.
The 5 Don’ts of Frequent Feedback
The transformation of the typical performance review process often includes the phrase, “make feedback more frequent”. That sounds like a good idea. It is if certain conditions are in place. There are five conditions which will either make or break the efficacy of frequent feedback.
I was out of town for a weekend and decided to play golf at a local course. Because I was alone the starter connected me with a threesome. One of the men frequently spoke. He spoke during everyone’s shots. He was whispered when someone was about to hit their shot yet you could still hear him.
He would not, or could not, stop himself. His frequent babbling was annoying enough but he made it worse by talking only about himself. He babbled about how he had played this and that hole. He added unnecessary details about the unfair bounce that prevented a par etc. etc. It was not helpful and it was annoying. The same annoyance and lack of value can occur with frequent feedback about work performance unless these five conditions are met.
The Five Don’ts
The first of the five conditions important for adding value during frequent feedback is to have a clear standard of behavior that everyone agrees will add value. In other words, don’t forget to create a clear standard of specific and observable behaviors. With a clear standard, managers and employees can provide helpful feedback based on that standard. They can avoid expressing opinions.
This leads us to the second condition. Don’t forget to use data during feedback and avoid unsolicited criticism. When a clear standard exists, everyone and anyone can ask if the behavior matches the standard. Criticism or opinions are unnecessary. A manager expressing an opinion about the performance of an employee can create fear in that employee.
Often the feedback will lead to emotions. This is especially true when there are challenging performance issues which have not been addressed in a timely manner. When there is emotion empathy is needed. Don’t forget to provide empathy. Empathy is the sincere expression that you understand the emotions someone is experiencing. Feedback without empathy is worthless. Empathy allows the person receiving the feedback to absorb it and use it. If there is an emotion and there is no empathy the feedback is rejected. The entire interaction becomes a waste of time.
This next condition don’t will seem out of order. Don’t forget to ask permission. Get the person’s consent. Ask permission to provide feedback. Even better, ask everyone in your organization to ask permission before they provide feedback. Make it a rule or part of the standard. Allow the person who is to receive the feedback to say, “no, I am not ready”. Give them the opportunity to wait for a better time.
Our Declaration of Independence states, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Feedback is delivered between men and women with the consent of those receiving the feedback. Give them the choice. Allow them to consent.
The most important condition is last. This condition is also the biggest change in how the typical manager thinks about feedback. Don’t make the feedback about the person. Make the feedback about process or method. Two of the earlier conditions were “don’t forget to use data during feedback (avoid unsolicited criticism)” and “don’t forget to create a clear standard.” If these are handled then the only thing left to discuss is either the process within which the employee is working or the method the employee is using to perform.
Feedback doesn’t have to be about the person. Give them feedback about their methods and how those methods can change. This will eliminate fear of change.
Frequent feedback is not enough to create optimum value and optimum improvement. Be sure you create the right environment by implementing these conditions. It will make the feedback easier and more effective.
Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal. Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.
Love has always been good business. No, I’m not talking about the world’s oldest profession. That’s not love. I’m talking about the kind of love that leads to wedding bells – businesses that cater to people who want to find true love or who have found it and want to celebrate it.
But what can those types of love-focused businesses teach us about how we can use love as a principle that shapes any business? Plenty.
Janis Spindel, the president of Serious Matchmaking, believes the type of trust and confidence you need when looking for personal love are also vital to leadership in any business.
“A loving relationship is about being committed,” Spindel said. “Business leadership requires the same commitment and intuitiveness.”
When people love others, Spindel said, they communicate more clearly and support each other more proactively, which makes for healthy relationships in business as well as in life.
Lindsey Sachs, whose company Collective/by Sachs plans weddings in Colorado and Minnesota, believes love is an essential lens through which to view business decisions.
“Considering love in the context of business helps to make companies human, authentic, relatable and better yet, more than a transaction,” Sachs said. “As professionals and consumers, we all understand the overwhelming feeling love plays in our emotions and decisions. A company that infuses love is more likely to stand out.”
Love, she said, creates empathy and purpose in her work.
“With love present, we can more clearly relate to our clients and staff, find common goals to lead to more powerful solutions, products, and services,” she said. “And keeping love at the forefront encourages us to see our work through a different lens of appreciation. … Reminding ourselves that our work stems from a love of something much greater, our overall context, attitude and ultimately productivity will adapt for the good.”
Businesses that promote love and celebrate love still need profits to keep their doors open, but they understand the powerful connection between loving what you do in the service of people who love what you do. It builds strong relationships, trust, loyalty, and the commitment that allows a business to not only make money but make a difference.
How to Give White Flag® Feedback
Delivering effective feedback is enormously important and enormously challenging. I have spoken about this in my last two blogs. I identified the three reasons why the feedback is so challenging namely the confusion between feedback and criticism, the concern about making things worse, and a lack of knowledge about how to give feedback such that the other party accepts it, learns, and applies the learning.
I also explained how we needed a tool that could make it safe to deliver and safe to accept. I explained the importance of the White Flag® as a neutral symbol to pave the way for giving and receiving feedback in a non-threatening way. The White Flag® is the international sign of truce. It provides a context that allows for a free flow of information without fear of reprisal.
But how do you use the White Flag®? What are the key steps and techniques? Can anyone do it? The purpose here is to answer these questions and a few others.
There are three key factors that optimize the use of the White Flag® tool. These three factors can be summarized in three words, Think-Behave-Improve.
First, to use the White Flag® properly it is most useful to think about it in the most useful way. The purpose of the White Flag® is not to assign blame on a person. The purpose is to partner to uncover the real root causes of mistakes. The giver and the receiver can partner to search for root causes inside the process. Those root causes can nearly always be found in the process (94% of the time according to Dr. W. Edwards Deming) and not the person. Feedback therefore is not about making someone wrong. It is about making the process right.
In order to trigger the feedback there needs to be clear expectations. These expectations can take the form of operationalized values behaviors. There are three categories of values behaviors namely integrity, respect, and customer focus.
These behaviors must be operationalized meaning they are observable by anyone. By making the expectations observable anyone can decide if the expectations are being met simply by observation. If they do not observe what is expected that becomes the trigger for feedback and therefore the use of the White Flag® tool.
Once we know feedback is needed we must deliver it in a manner that optimizes learning. We are calm. We wait if there is too much emotion (either with us or the other person). We ask permission to give the feedback. We share the data (what we saw or heard) and avoid opinion or judgement. We provide clarification if necessary. We ask questions to find the real root cause of the problem. We ask “what process is not working?” We ask questions to identify the first 15% of that process and then we identify how to improve that first 15%. We do this in partnership not in judgement. We do it as a team and not in isolation.
All the while we are asking these questions. We are calm. We are inquisitive. We ask questions to learn and not to blame. We ask these questions to uncover a new action step to address the process issues. The White Flag® is a tool to decide how to fix a process as a team.
The White Flag® is a tool that makes feedback fearless and effective. It is simple. It’s not easy and it’s doable and necessary for learning.
Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal. Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.
“Sunday Negotiation Insight”
“Evaluate the mindset that gives you advice. One that’s sane or insane, may have the best of intentions, but you’ll bear the cost for following such advice.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert www.TheMasterNegotiator.com
“Talk Can Be Cheap And Costly”
Talk is cheap and cheap talk can be costly. The costly aspect of cheap talk can come in the form of too much bluster setting the groundwork for future activities. To the degree that bluster is believed, and depending on what’s at stake, there can be a high price to pay to bring such bluster to fruition.
When you’re engaged with a prognosticator or anyone that you perceive as being overly zealous of a position and/or expected outcome, be wary. Raise your level of awareness to the possibility of being led to a place in which you do not wish to reside. By being mindful of such insights you might possibly prevent yourself from falling prey to cheap talk. Even if what someone engages in is all talk and no action, such sentiments could cost you time, money, and other assets that you might have used to progress your own agenda.
Understanding the potential cost of cheap talk can allow you to think differently per the cost you might have to incur from following someone else’s ideology. Thus, be very mindful as to the course of direction you adopt as the result of who and what you believe. If you don’t like where someone’s edicts might lead, don’t follow. By being mentally flexible, you’ll always be more adept at making course corrections … and everything will be right with the world.
What does this have to do with negotiations?
In a negotiation, be careful of whose verbal elixir you consume. Instead of it making you younger, wiser, and better off, it might just increase your aging process in the form of more stress, anxiety, and a worse outcome for you. Remember, everything that glitters ain’t gold. Such is definitely the case when it comes to someone espousing words that intentionally, or unintentionally lead you upon a mental path that doesn’t serve you. Sometimes, when you stare into the abyss (i.e. become mesmerized), the abyss stares back at you (i.e. you lose your will). That may cause you to lose your control. Control yourself by controlling what you believe and the source of those beliefs.
Remember, you’re always negotiating.
“Sometimes, the subliminal mind stores impressions of what the conscious mind is unaware of. In order to see better, look for the unseen.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert,www.TheMasterNegotiator.com
When observing your body language, do you take the time to interpret what you see? I don’t mean, if you see a cat, you recognize it as a cat and then go about addressing your next activity. What I’m referring to, especially when it comes to major decisions, is understanding how you formulate your decision based on the way you interpret what you’re seeing.
When it comes to reading body language, many experts will inform you that the eyes are the window to the soul. That’s true to a degree and not so truthful. The one consideration that has to be factored in that analysis is the interpreter. That means, per the way each of us see ourself, we see the world. Thus, if we say someone looks up and to the left, they’re recalling something that’s occurred in the past, we may be right. We could also be wrong if that person’s inclination is to look up and to the left when considering future activities. Therefore, we must know how that person uses her eyes to gain a higher level of perspective per what that person is doing at that time. That’s one aspect per how we perceive that person. The other aspect that we should consider is why we’re giving the meaning to that person’s actions (i.e. what we really saw). If you’ve observed the person’s eye movement throughout a conversation and you note that she looks up and to the left when considering future activities, you have a foundation upon which to base your assumptions. Ergo, be sure to base your perception and what you see on a firm foundation, not just conjecture. To do so otherwise could cause you to fall prey to your lying eyes attempting to convince you that you’re seeing the truth. Your eyes may not lie to you, but they can be lied to, which could place you in a quagmire.
Consider the following checklist, based on the importance of the decision.
It’s been said that seeing is believing. That’s true to some degree because to a degree we see what we expect to see; that has to do with the way our brain perceives motion, fills in voids, etc. The point is, while we believe our eyes don’t lie to us, we can believe a lie that we see. Thus, always be mindful about how you glean some clues as to what someone is thinking, based on the movement of their eyes. Eye movement is part of the puzzle. To be more exact, look for clusters of body movements (i.e. hands, head, feet, etc.) to add validity to your assessment.
The better you become at deciphering how you interpreted what your eyes see, the better you’ll be able to read body language. Then, you’ll be more certain about believing what your eyes are telling you … and everything will be right with the world.
Remember, you’re always negotiating!
It’s a constant challenge for any business to attract the best talent against all the competition and this may well be high on your list of business priorities for the immediate short-term. I just wonder however, how much of the everyday business activity and behaviors you miss as CEO that could be severely diluting your chances of getting the talent you need. It’s detail that is quite possibly invisible to you.
Sadly, I’m finding that simple good manners and courtesy are going downhill in the corporate world with people just not responding, not being accountable and responsible for getting a task done, not doing what they say they will do and having a general disrespect for others time and agenda. In my opinion, this all-too-common level of apathy is having a dramatic effect on corporate culture and therefore on securing the top talent and here’s why:
There are of course many ways in which talent is attracted to your company and these are just a few of the areas I’ve experienced in my work with authentic employee brand and engagement that get in the way.
As CEO you have a responsibility to minimize the risk in your business. Not addressing these important areas of employer brand investment could present a risk you have not considered fully enough.
ACTIONS
Review your 3 last year’s recruitment insights data and do the following:
I’m sure you’re familiar with that unpleasant feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you have to give someone negative feedback. You don’t want any drama and you try to avoid conflict, but eventually you have to find a way to tell them that the report needs to be redone, that they’ve been late for the third time, or that the promotion is being given to someone else.
While it may not be surprising that, according to a recent HBR study, 21% of people will avoid giving negative feedback to direct reports, the same study revealed that 37% of people also don’t give positive feedback! At that point, the question becomes: Is it actually harder to give praise than critique?
The article proposes a variety of reasons why people don’t give positive feedback, ranging from being “too busy” and forgetting, to feeling like a boss should be tough, or that giving praise was a sign of weakness.
Most intriguing to me, however, was the idea that some people don’t give positive feedback because they don’t know how. So from here, let’s look at three simple strategies for giving clear and effective positive feedback.
K.I.S.S.
No, I’m not suggesting you do anything that will warrant a call from HR. You are probably familiar with the age-old acronym K.I.S.S., or “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Praise doesn’t need to be emotional, gushy, effusive or melodramatic. People just like to know – especially from you “tough graders” out there – that they have met your standards, produced high-quality work, or been successful at completing a difficult project on time and under budget.
Simple comments like, “Thanks for getting that piece back to me so quickly,” “The layout looks terrific, nice job,” or “Looks like you got everything back up to date, much better” are all that is needed to let people know where they stand. It also provides a sense of closure, which helps keep them from worrying that there may be more bad news to come, so they can comfortably shift their full attention to the next task on the list.
Be Specific
Generic comments like “good job,” while better than nothing, don’t tell the person what it is that you like about it, and can often feel perfunctory and insincere. Whatever it is, referencing the specific effort or product helps them to understand what is most important to you and encourages them to focus future efforts on achieving similar outcomes.
Even if it is just following up on something for which you had previously given negative feedback, acknowledge that the specific problem was fixed to appropriate standards and what positive outcome it promotes, e.g., “This new layout is much cleaner, and the image really pops; the client is going to love it.”
Look in the Mirror
If you’re really stuck for how to give praise, ask yourself, if you had done that work, how would you want to be appreciated? Be the boss you wish you’d had, and offer the word of praise that would have been meaningful to you.
Don’t worry that offering praise will make it seem like you’re “going soft” or that people will slack off once they think you’re happy. On the contrary, for many people, praise is actually a motivator. Success begets success, and feelings of success beget more behaviors of success.
What’s critical to understand is that when people feel like they receive sufficient positive feedback, it makes them more open to hearing and accepting negative feedback from the same person. This is because they know that the boss is fair and clear, and that all feedback, whether positive or negative, is honest and comes from the heart.
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Do you have trouble giving feedback, whether positive or negative? Or do you have other questions or feedback about this issue? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss it with me personally!
5 Elements Improve Speed in Your Organization with Self-Management
Birds flock. Why? They are cooperating to find food, shelter, and avoid predators more quickly and easily. How do they flock? Hard-wired into their brains are the principles of flying at the same average speed, distance, and direction as their closest neighbors. The hard-wired principles enable them to behave instinctively and accomplish the three goals more quickly and easily (shelter, food, and safety). They are a self-organizing social system. Their success depends on the cooperation of all the birds following all the hard-wired skills.
Can an organization operate as a self-organizing and/or self-management system, and should it? Yes! Nature holds examples of self-organizing systems (birds, bees, ants etc.) and we can also find them in our economy. WAZE, Lyft, Uber, Wikipedia and even the internet are all examples of self-organizing and self-management systems. Can we apply these ideas in our organizations and teams? Just as the success for the birds depends on cooperation to follow principles, success in organizations depends on cooperation of the people.
There is an important distinction between self- management and manager-dependency. Most organizations have a manager-dependent environment. For example, in the typical organization managers are expected to know the answers and to solve the problems. They are expected to be omniscient and omnipotent. They are expected to provide feedback to employees to create improved performance. That is why they are often promoted to the manager. They once did they job and so they have all the answers.
A manager-dependent environment encourages employees wait to receive ideas for improvement from their managers before making any significant changes in performance. There is a hesitation to try new things for fear of being criticized or evaluated by the manager. A manager-dependent environment creates fear and therefore less innovation. Self-Management increases employee engagement and innovation. Employees create their own feedback mechanisms and can act autonomously. This accelerates the decisions and therefore accelerates the ability to adapt to changes. It improves speed.
When my daughter Emily was 12, one morning she missed her school bus. She was very upset and came downstairs to my office crying, “Dad, I missed the bus. Can you take me to school?” Of course I agreed but then asked her a question, “what do you need to do to catch the bus on your own from now on?’ She looked at me in a thoroughly confused manner. At that moment I was not sure she could think of an idea.
When she arrived home that afternoon she said, “Dad, I thought about what you asked. If you buy me a timer I will set it 5 minutes before the bus arrives and if it goes off I will know I only have 5 minutes left. I can then easily catch the bus.”
I told her that sounded great. I also asked her what else she could do to be prepared in the morning. She said she would set her books out by the front door right before bed time. For the next 2-1/2 years she used this method and always caught the bus on time. She self-managed her ability to catch the bus by creating and following her own process.
How to increase speed. To become more highly competitive organizations must ask employees to make more decisions on their own. A recent book about the virtues of talent management has just been published. It reinforces the Jack Welch management methods. Welch insisted on providing frequent honest feedback with complete candor. In my experience managers don’t have that kind of time to provide frequent feedback. They lack the time and the skills to constantly be observing employees and providing feedback. Managers should instead rely more on employee, trust them more, and facilitate them creating their own answers to their own problems just as my daughter was able to identify a way to catch her bus.
The 5 Elements
For employees to figure out ways to self-manage their own performance, a leader can clarify and communicate the key principles that will enable all employees to self-manage. The five principles are Vision, Mission, Values, Strategy, and an effective Leadership Theory. The leadership theory that provides the best opportunity for self-management is Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s Theory of Profound Knowledge.
A leader’s first responsibility is to create an environment that facilitates performance improvement. Those interested in accelerating results and performance need to be courageous and trust that employees can create their own solutions. It requires a method to create an environment of trust and self-organization through the clarity of the 5 principles.
A manager-dependent environment is slow and talent management often includes a ranking of employees, rewarding the top performers and “yanking out” the poorer performers. This policy and practice creates unnecessary competition minimizing the opportunity for innovation. The “birds” will not naturally cooperate in this environment.
A leader can clarify the key principles which will allow the “bird” to self-manage. Clarifying the strategic initiatives, the vision and mission enables employees to create their own objectives and methods for performance improvement. With autonomy comes choice. With choice comes engagement. With engagement comes performance. With self-management comes speed.
Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal. Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.
What Aren’t Your Customers Telling You
During a recent podcast, the interviewer asked me, “What is a question that other interviewers have not asked that you would like me to ask?” I’ve never been posed that question before in over 100 interviews.
The conversation was being recorded and felt pressure to answer quickly. I was unable to process the request at a conscious level. As a result, I ended up sharing something that I have only shared with a few close friends and colleagues. This shocked me.
Her question got me thinking.
Focus groups and surveys are powerful tools that innovators use to gather perspectives on their customers. Recruiters use interviews to discern more about job applicants. Friends even use a form of these to learn what other people think about them, their choices, or their personality.
Unfortunately, the way these approaches are traditionally done yields answers that are limited in value.
The reality is, people make decisions based on their subconscious beliefs, not conscious ones. And they are usually quite different. If you ask typical questions and give people time to ruminate over their responses, they will reply with what they believe to be true or what they think you want to hear. This is conscious thinking at work.
Another reason these approaches often don’t get to the heart of the matter is because the process of asking questions inadvertently “leads the witness” and biases their responses. The questions we ask impact the range of possible answers.
But what people don’t tell you may in fact be more valuable than what they tell you.
Given this, after using the approaches above, try asking one or more of the following questions:
And don’t given them a lot of time to contemplate the “right” answer. You want them to answer quickly. Gut reaction.
Make up your own questions. Of course to ask questions like these you need to create a safe environment where people feel comfortable saying what they truly believe with no repercussions.
Use these questions with everyone: prospects, clients, people who never bought from you (and might never), friends, family members, colleagues, your boss, co-workers, or anyone who might have a valuable insight to share to generate.
Ask your clients these types of questions about your services. Ask former customers questions like this about your products or the products of your competitors.
The goal of these questions is to gather insights that would not be available to you through traditional methods such as surveys and focus groups.
If done correctly, you will more than likely be unable to predict their response.
And their reply may come as a surprise to them as well – just like when I was asked one of those questions. These are the valuable responses you want obtain because it uncovers their subconscious beliefs – the beliefs that drive behaviors.
