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Tag: leadership

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Growth Leadership Personal Development

The Complexity of Leadership Responsibility

Leaders have one primary responsibility. Facilitate their team toward accomplishing a mission.

However, the mission has become so complicated, ambiguous, and involving so many stakeholders that it can feel nearly impossible to accomplish in a way that satisfies everyone.

This dichotomy is the ultimate challenge in leadership.

When we look at leadership, growth, and change in business, there is only one certainty. Saying, “Because we have always done it that way.” is always the wrong answer. Homogeneous thinking is, and complacency is a sure way to miss something, fail to put something in place or be left behind.

As leaders reconnaissance becomes one of our primary responsibilities, we have to remain situationally aware and understand not only the lay of the land. We also have to become acutely aware of what is out there as far as opportunities and challenges, and how these can affect us, and how our actions affect not only those above and below us but also those adjacent, as well as internally and externally.

I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Bawa Jain, the Secretary-General for the World Council of Religious Leaders at the United Nations, and one of the founders of  The Center for Responsible Leadership.

He poses three simple questions to help resolve these issues and lists these three critical principles towards assisting leaders in finding sustainable solutions to their missions and directives.

  1. Are we making decisions for the present or the future?
  2. Are we acting out of conviction or convenience?
  3. Is this constructive or destructive?

Our answers to these questions can help us build some foundational clarity to our mission that can help us alleviate the challenges behind conflicting stakeholders, ambiguity, and complexity in our goals and directives.

As leaders, we do not have the latitude to think that we are ever “in charge” instead, we have to accept the responsibility that our teams, people, mission and accomplishments are in our charge. It is up to us in our roles to find the most positive, and productive methodologies and outcomes towards meeting the opportunities that we see before ourselves.

You can find our podcast conversation with Bawa Jain on The Leadership Update Brief on C-Stuite Radio.
Ed Brzychcy is former U.S. Army Infantry Staff-Sergeant with service across three combat deployments to Iraq. After his time in the military, he received his MBA from Babson College and now coaches organizational leadership and growth through his consultancy, Blue Cord Management.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development

How Coaching Helps Handle Challenges at Work and With Others in Your Life

One of the reasons people come to a coach is because they lose perspective.

As they’re attempting to move forward, particularly into a new realm – new career, new relationship, new living arrangement, they feel challenged, stressed and often forget what worked for them in the past. Or, they think they have to do something new.

Here’s a little story from a supervision session I had with one of my coach clients. She works with her clients to help them with diet and exercise and makes health recommendations about wellness and supplements.

As were talking – it was a phone session – I heard her sniffing and clearing her throat. I interrupted the discussion we were having on the use of paradoxical interventions. [Will explain that in another tip, you’ll love it.]

Sharon: How are you feeling?

Amy: OK.  Just have a bad cold. [I hear her sigh] Annoying

Sharon: That’s crummy.  What are you doing for it?

Amy: Not much

Sharon: Not much?  You’re not taking anything?

Amy: I just got involved in other things and have been so tired.

Sharon: But isn’t that what you do with your clients, make recommendations for things they could use?

Amy: Well, yeah . .

Sharon: So, what might you recommend to one of your clients who had similar symptoms

She’s silent for a minute:

Amy: Well . . . There are a number of things. (She seems to be thinking and then I hear what sounds like opening a cabinet door.)

Amy: Lysine – 4-5000 mg; Vitamin C 2000 mg a few times a day for the first couple of days and then back to 1-2,000 for the duration of the cold; they can also use Olive Leaf; zinc; garlic . . . . drink lots of water.  And of course get plenty of rest.

Sharon: But you’re not doing the same for yourself?

Amy:  Uh . . . I have been drinking tea with lemon and honey…. [She hesitates]  It’s what my mother used to give me. I miss her.  When I was little, I’d get into her bed, she’d bring up a tray with a pretty cup of tea and some toast.  She’d tell me stories, cuddle me . . . She’s so far away now.

Sharon: Hmmmm.  So what have you done in the past as an adult when you’ve gotten a cold
that works for you?

Amy: [Laughing ]. I do really well with Lysine and Zinc and a garlic extract called Allicin.

Sharon: Do you have any?

Amy: Mmm hmmm.

Sharon: So . . .

Amy: Right?  OK.  I’ll get on my routine.  Thanks.

The next time we spoke and she reported she was feeling a lot better, I asked her a little more about how she reacted to her cold challenge. I wanted to know what tripped her up in following her own advice.

What she said was interesting

Amy: I hate getting sick.  When I do I feel like I let down my clients by being a bad role model. It’s actually kind of depressing. I’m not supposed to get sick.  Made me feel down and then I didn’t feel motivated to do anything.  It’s good we talked and you reminded me of what I know.  When I’m disappointed in myself, I tend not to take the best care of myself, even though I tell my clients how important it is to treat themselves well when they don’t feel well.

Sharon: How might you intervene with yourself when that happens.

Amy:I guess the first thing is be aware that I’m feeling blue.  Then I have a choice. Take better care of myself or just feel bad. I can remind myself of my favorite remedies, and make sure I have some on hand and prescribe caring to myself as if I were my own client.

Sharon: Good!  And maybe call Mom and get some virtual Tea, honey and Lemon over the phone?

Amy: [giggles] Yes.  That would be great.  I hate to tell her I don’t feel well, because she worries. But it would really help to get some special Mom TLC.

There’s considerable research on how challenges create stress and stress impairs our ability to know what we know.

Under stress, our brains and body are hard wired to react to the emotional aspects of the situation.  It’s part of the fight or flight instinct.  We can’t as readily consider the facts.

That’s why it’s important to remind ourselves that we do have internal resources that have worked in the past; to open our mental cabinet, see the choices we’ve previously used well, and consider which of those to call into action.

In addition, what worked with one challenge might have relevance for another. Think about the example above with Amy.  Another challenge she might have is in a relationship with a colleague at work.

There was a misunderstanding. Amy’s feelings are hurt.  She’s been thrown into an emotional field that makes it hard for her to remember how she and her colleague work well together.

She needs to stop, acknowledge to herself that she’s upset and stressed and then remind herself of what’s worked positively with with her coworker in the past. It would also be helpful to consider what created the uncomfortable communication.

What happened that led to the upset?

How might she avoid that in the future, creating a better work space for both of them?

Key takeaways:

  • Under challenge we experience stress which makes it hard to focus on the facts.
  • Take the time to remind yourself of what’s worked previously.
  • Which steps can you borrow from your previous successes and apply to this situation?
  • Assess the triggers that precipitated the challenge and consider how you might avoid them moving forward.

Make sense?

Next tip coming tomorrow

Thinking about getting certified as a Professional Coach? Want to talk about it? Or any questions you have about professional coaching? Let’s talk and see whether or not it makes sense for you to become a certified professional coach.

Click below

To Learn About Our Upcoming Fast Track Certification Workshop This March in New York City

The cost of $75 for the 30 minute consultation can be applied to the TLC Professional Coach Training program if you decide to join.Warmest regards,

Sharon 🙂

Dr. Sharon Livingston

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Making Decisions Outside Your Comfort Zone

Business leaders must become aware of their cognitive biases in how they make and execute on their decisions. These decisions can affect their teams, the growth of their organizations, and the future potential gains, and losses, that the business receives.

Loss aversion is the cognitive bias where people naturally lose a more significant amount of satisfaction from a loss than they receive from a similarly valued gain. This bias manifests in two distinct patterns, in anticipation, and in framing a particular loss or gain.

Anticipation can become a crucial component of this bias, and affect decision makers based on how they have experienced gains or losses in the past. Decision-makers who have historically faced a weighty loss may become more hesitant to enter similar situations. This hesitation can lead to lost opportunities or undue delay in moving forward on projects. For example, hiring managers who have felt that a number of their poor hires have come from a particular generation may be hesitant in hiring similar candidates. Just the same, those decision-makers who have beaten the odds in the past may have a skewed sense of their success and take more significant risks in the future. Every financial prospectus explains this flawlessly, “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

Framing the risk, and explaining the loss in different terms may also affect how decision-makers approach a solution. Objectively, gaining a discount or avoiding a surcharge is the same. However, both situations elicit different emotional responses. Based on their past deals, and how they approach situations, this opt-in versus opt-out can skew behavior and allow for poor decision making towards critical business matters. Managers who are facing cutting expenses from a budget may overlook opportunities to raise revenue because their focus is only on the expense column.

Ultimately business leaders must remain objective in their decisions.

Extensive subjectivity or emotional involvement in the subject matter can allow for leaders to become irrational and not make the best decisions with the data and information present. Business leaders must be able to look past the data and see it in context. One data point, however it may be framed, is still a single data point. The more considerable power of data is in being able to view it in context, either to other similar points, or trends over time.
Similarly, managers must be able to see the upside of choices and understand that the most significant gains lie in the outliers. If all of our decisions must be satisfied within six standard deviations, then it will become impossible to progress and make the necessary leaps for remaining competitive in today’s dynamic market environment.

Every day business leaders are forced to expand their comfort zones. Remaining knowledgeable on this common cognitive bias can help ensure that they are making the best decisions in leaving their safe space and exploring how they can expand, especially in incremental ways.

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Importance of Humility in Your Leadership

What comes to mind when you picture a leader with humility? Most people typically think of a leader as someone who has charisma, possibly a big ego or even someone who is an influencer. On top of this there are many leaders who think a leader takes charge, has authority or a position to tell others what to do or to win influence over others because of self-accomplishment. That isn’t leadership, it is power and they are two very different things. If you want to be seen as a leader, stand out or emerge as a leader in your work or life, then likely that stems more from the desire of power than it does from leadership. Leadership is nothing about you, it’s about others.

Humility might not be the first quality that comes to mind when you think of leadership skills, but studies are showing that it is one of the most vital characteristics of successful leaders.

“The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.” -John Ruskin

One important component is often overlooked: humility. Humility is not cited as often as some other character traits in leadership literature. Since not all leaders read or go by the same leadership guide book, you need to look to your values and see what makes the most important way to lead and to motivate employees for greater productivity. Humble leaders may fly under the radar and be passed over for hiring or promoting. Humility might not be the first quality that comes to mind when you think of leadership skills, but studies are showing that it is one of the most vital characteristics of successful leaders.

In its broadest sense humility is defined as “1) self-awareness, 2) appreciating others’ strengths and contribution, and 3) openness to new ideas and feedback regarding one’s performance. Leaders who are humble have a better grasp on organizational needs and make better informed decisions about task performance.” – Dr. Robert Hogan, the creator of the Hogan Assessment.

Contrary to popular opinion, humility is not a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of strength. Great leaders know who they are; they know what they want; and they believe in their ability to achieve their goals. At the same time, great leaders understand that they cannot achieve their goals on their own – that they rely on others to accomplish what they cannot do themselves.

Research confirms that humble leaders are more effective.  Admitting you don’t have all the answers creates opportunities for learning and builds trust, establishes credibility and provides an example of how to deal with uncertainty.

 “Two things define you:  Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.” – Kristin K Pmanny

How you interact with people is important especially in a business relationship. Some believe that humility in leadership feeds your overall effectiveness. Humility I is too easily dismissed as a leadership quality because people associate it with weakness. Yet managers who exhibit traits of humility–such as seeking feedback and focusing on the needs of others–resulted in better employee engagement and job performance.

Humble Leadership Empowers Others

“Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less.”

-Unknown as many are credited for this quote.

True humility also requires courage and trust that stem from the leaders’ confidence in themselves and their abilities. Humble leaders help employees gain new skills and become more proficient at their jobs.

Being Open to the Opinions of Others

Seek input from others to ensure you understand all the facts before making decisions. No one has all the answers. Humble leaders value the opinions of others rather than ignore or dismiss them.

Admit to Making Mistakes

Sometimes, it’s important to admit that you don’t know the best answer, and wait until you have the best information to make a decision or change. True humility requires courage and trust that stem from the leaders’ confidence in themselves and their abilities.

Self-Reflect

Like many leadership skills, humility may not come easy to everyone. One of the most powerful tools is to write in a journal. By journaling, humble leaders can go back and see how you can better handle situations. There’s always room for improvement.

Let Their People Do Their Jobs

Micromanaging kills morale. Allowing your employees do their work may need you to check with them from time-to-time. Sometimes sitting in on their brainstorm sessions gives you the opportunity to understand how they do what they do. Acknowledging others’ opinions and ideas shows strength and competence, and that you’re not threatened by others’ valuable contributions. When people feel valued, they’re more productive, which creates a positive atmosphere.

“Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.”

-Ezra Taft Benson

Let me know how this fits within your leadership and how I can help you.

Categories
Best Practices Body Language Culture Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Women In Business

What to do When Whatever Can Happen Suddenly Does and Tries to Destroy Your Meeting – Part 2

You’ve just been attacked verbally by a super-irate member of your meeting.  Your heart is pounding.  Your eyes are wide.  The rest of the group is focused on you for help.  What the heck?!  Who signed me up for this???!!!!

Here’s one technique to feel more centered and apart from your own emotional reactions when aggression is expressed.  Experience yourself observing while simultaneously leading.  You can take an emotional step back from involvement in the group by imagining that you’re watching a movie; the story is unfolding before your eyes and you can watch and think about the characters, the plot and the implications from a slightly removed vantage point. We thereby spare ourselves the stress and high emotions that can distort perceptions of the findings as well as jeopardize our ability to lead.

By the way, in marketing research focus groups, this is excellent advice for the observers in the backroom. As we’ve all experienced, it’s often difficult for clients to hear negative and emotionally charged feedback about their brain children. And, who could blame them? Their jobs are on the line.  Their self-esteem about their own creative process which brought the test ideas into being are being challenged and shot down in a moment, while they may have spent months or even years coming to the point where they are brave enough to expose them to their audiences. It’s natural that clients are likely to take any attacks on their products and advertising personally making it difficult to listen with an open mind.

It is therefore a wise idea for clients to have the safety of the movie metaphor. And it works well with the focus group set up. Watching the “movie” through the glass is a logical extension of the physical environment.  The window is like a large screen. The seats are lined up in tiers. It’s dark like a movie theatre. Many facilities even serve popcorn to encourage the sense of more passive viewing and listening.

However, it’s a totally different situation in the front room as the leader. The facilitator might pretend that she/he is the focusing lens of the camera, but… the problem occurs when the monster in the movie slowly turns its head, catches the camera’s eye and focuses his fury right into the audience’s face. We all know how frightening that is when that character seems to come off the big screen and become aware of you as viewer.  Our safe seat in the auditorium is now confronted by the scary beast. An icy chill streaks up our spine. Our hearts begin to race. Our eyes widen. Some will utter a frightened, HUH!! If the change
in the monster’s demeanor and attention comes out of the blue, the intensity of our reactions is greater.

Imagine how much worse that is when an angry group member captures the moderator’s eye and blasts him/her with a tirade of emotion intended for God knows what, his boss,  his father/mother, or anyone else who has made them angry. While we can sit safely in the movie theatre just having our momentary feeling of fright, in the leader’s seat we must have strategies in place for dealing with these people.

Art Shulman, a friend of mine who has attended our training and learned about our Snow White Theory for dealing with the various types of characters in the group, wrote a comic tongue-in-cheek account of his version of The Hulk appearing in one of his sessions.

Here’s a synopsis and a small excerpt.  Thank you Art!:

Apparently, an already transformed, surly, Hulk-like look-a-like known as “Beast” presented himself in one of Art’s groups (or perhaps hypothetical groups). In the go round he growled and snarled at the group and at Art.  Art, silently, but frantically tried to recall all of the interventions he had learned to employ in dealing with difficult people. He jokingly reflects to himself things like:

  • Slip him a Mickey?
  • Pull out a can of Mace?
  • Use the ejector seat?

Then he tells us that he remembered the seating position behavior he learned about for working with difficult respondents. He invites Beast, AKA Grumpy or Hulk who is sitting in the confrontational, counter-leadership position at the end of the table to switch seats with Happy who is sitting in the compliant seat to the leader’s immediate right. He correctly explains that the chair opposite the leader is likely to be taken by a provoking, challenging character. One way to change behavior is to literally change the person’s seat.

In Art’s Group Thriller, he has this Grumpy Beast switch his seat with Happy, the character most likely to support the leader. Then Art announced to the group that the topic of the session was Christmas stockings, where upon our Grumpy Hulk uttered a thunderous rumbling sound like that of a volcano about to erupt, turned to him and the people in the backroom, and in growing ferocity picked up a chair and flung it at the mirror.

Once our imaginary respondent, Beast, released the pent up frustration that had been growing to a breaking point, he was able to express the softer feelings and reasons why.

In Art’s words:

“Then, as we all looked on, Beast sat back down and became tearful,. .’Every December I apply for jobs as Santa Claus. But I’m always rejected once they find out I’m a professional wrestler’

For the rest of the session he was a pussycat, making all sorts of  useful suggestions to increase sales of my client’s product”

* * *

With just a little luck, nothing this extreme will ever happen to you when you’re leading a group or meeting. Yet there is that nagging old Murphy reminding us that anything can and will. The sheer knowledge of this possibility, no matter how rare, keeps us needing to have an approach to handle the most difficult respondents even though most groups are comprised of amiable, cooperative people.

An important intervention for your consideration:

I would like to suggest a little tactic to have in your back pocket that you can rely on if Murphy and The Hulk show up in your meeting and scare you with a roar and the mighty muscle that looks like he can back it up.  It is a very simple technique that diffuses the raw emotion of this grumpy person. And remember, all of us have the capacity for being quite grumpy at times, when provoked.

The unexpected outburst starts. Allow the participant to vent and finish his/her little tirade. You will be feeling the attack and so will the rest of the group. If you are like most people when confronted with such a strong assault your heart is racing and you probably feel a little frightened yourself not unlike the shock I felt when the computer came crashing down on my head out of seemingly nowhere.

Remind yourself to take a breath. It will be over soon.

You can give yourself time to think and recover from your pounding heart and dazed feeling AND at the same time, help this angry person calm down by saying: “I am sorry could you repeat that…I want to be sure I really understood what you said.”

While it may sound counter intuitive to invite this furious fomentation to be unleashed yet again, it actually has the reverse effect.  It is at once both an extraordinarily simple AND extraordinarily powerful intervention.

Here’s why:

– Asking the person to repeat what was just expressed protects you from attempting to engage in a rational conversation with an irrational person (which is kind of like
trying to get your dog to teach you Calculus … you’ll just irritate him and get him to bark louder).

Our job is to keep the group communication constructive, reasonably logical and goal oriented (despite any needs to recognize emotional motivation.) The overly aggressive attacker is not able to contribute to this in their initial state of anger.

– Second, the meaning and intent of the overly aggressive  communication is usually quite clouded by the intensity of his adrenalin. It’s hard to decipher the meaning and
implications out from underneath the intensity of his emotional outburst.

The tone of your voice should communicate genuine interest in hearing the meaning of his/her words. You are asking so that you can help this person better articulate what they are thinking.

Like the Hulk who requires a build up of energy to fuel his fiery temper, the aggressive participant’s raw emotion has been spent. It will take time, energy and a sense of annoyance and irritation to rebuild for there to be another volcanic eruption.  When the participant repeats what was originally spat out in a rage, he/she will now express it far more calmly with far less feeling and agitation. This will give you an opportunity to:

* Recuperate, calm down, collect your thoughts and think of your next question

* Invite the group to react to the content of his message rather than the inappropriate emotion.

Then, in order to further help Grumpy respond in a way which will help him be more cooperative, ask “object oriented[4], easy questions with regard to the content. Examples would be:

– When did this happen?
– Where were you?
– How did you get there?
– Who was there?

People calm down when given the opportunity to answer simple factual question which have definite answers, having nothing to do with their opinions. (The reason is, opinions reside INSIDE a person’s head … they are ideas one has to ‘defend’, whereas facts are things that are usually more objectively verifiable, thus carrying less of a need for personal
defense).

In contrast, asking a very upset person “why?” (to which they may or may not know the answer, and which certainly puts them on the spot to defend their position) may create more anxiety and refuel their upset.

You might also, (at some point after the problem person has re-verbalized their aggression and been helped to calm down with these simple factual questions), acknowledge the problem or concern he has, then repeat it to the person to make sure you (and the rest
of the group) understands the issue.

What works about this approach?

You demonstrated that you have respect for her/him [as well as the others in the group] by accepting his reaction and wanting to hear more.

You remained apparently calm and avoided counter attacking and dismissing him. (That’s hard to do when someone is attacking you. During an aggressive confrontation, it’s natural to want to fight fire with fire.)

You indicated interest in finding out what he is really thinking and validated him by letting him know that you believe there is an important message beyond the fireworks.

You treated the issue as important to her/him, even though it might not be so for others, showing your interest in his and everyone’s reactions.

You demonstrated acceptance of his feelings to make it possible for him to talk without having to use intense emotional outbursts to get your attention.

You used the window of calm after the storm to reestablish your leadership in the group and take control

At the same time, you gave the other group members a moment to catch their breath too and calm down from the onslaught so you could all return to the task at hand.

Incidentally, Art was right about seating position. It’s much easier for an angry meeting participant to assert dominance and attempt to steal the floor if they can make eye contact with the leader. Acknowledging via eye contact invites the other to talk and interact. [You know how they
say to avoid eye contact with a crazy looking person when you’re walking the streets of Manhattan.] So either change his seat or change the balance of power by getting up, moving around the room and making it difficult for him/her to look you in the eye until this person has demonstrated that she/he can be cooperative.

When all else fails, from another fairy tale, keep a pitcher of water handy to melt the wicked witch. [Just kidding of course, but it’s only fair to note that Super-Grumpies come in both genders].

And remember, Murphy’s law is very unlikely to come to pass. Most meetings are comprised of people who want to be there and share their ideas rather than hitting you on the head with a heavy metal black box.

Hmmmm.  Maybe Dennis the flight attendant was the Incredible Hulk?

Wishing you great meetings!

Want to learn more about leading groups?  Contact me http://www.DrSharonLivingsto.com to find out about our upcoming training sessions or email me directly at DrSharonLivingston@gmail.com

[1] Wasn’t sure if he was just annoyed with me for invading his space or if he saw my strange behavior as a function of menopausal madness.  If he had only known the secrets for assuaging potentially aggressive reactions, we might have had a pleasant flight..

[2] After sharing my experience with other QRC’s I heard a story that topped this one.  A moderator was sitting in First Class.  During take off, a bottle of wine flew out of the galley, hit her in the head and knocked her unconscious!  We really have a high risk occupation, friends.

[3]  Grumpy is an icon for one of the 7 characters that show up in any group. Anyone unfamiliar with my metaphor that respondents in a focus group tend to assume the role of one of the seven dwarves from the classic 1800’s tale can visit http://www.snowwhitetheory.com/ for a description of all the postures people take in a group meeting and suggestions for how to handle them

[4] An object oriented question is just a factual question that has an easily identifiable right answer. An opinion might be judged, making the respondent anxious, but factual queries are experienced as safe.

 

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Are You Ready to Promote Someone?

Are your people ready for their next step up?

Promoting from within can be an excellent method of filling the ranks within a growing organization, but there are several pitfalls for senior leaders to consider when organizing their promotion plans and elevating people into new or elevated managerial positions.

These considerations fall into the broad categories of technical skills, peer relationships, and leadership attitude.

Promoting from within is never easy for organizations, but there are concrete steps to ensure that new managers are set up to succeed in their new roles and that their teams are not left leaderless and directionless.

Managers, especially new supervisors, are often promoted on technical merit. After all, if someone is good at a particular job, it can be easy to assume that they are ready for a direct supervisory role over others in the same or similar functions. Job functionality is only part of leadership competence. New managers often find themselves lacking or having little organizational, strategic, and interpersonal skills for their new roles.

For these managers it can be stressful adapting from actively being engaged in one project at a time to managing multiple projects over time, keeping track of each and ensuring accurate and positive outcomes for each. Just the same, they often cannot see how their job affects others inside and outside the organization on a more strategic basis and can have difficulty in finding the appropriate solutions to their teams’ larger-scale problems. As these problems intensify, new leaders can feel additional stress and become further removed from building the crucial relationships with their teams in establishing themselves as a growing leader and functional manager.

Compounding these interpersonal worries — and having the appropriate interpersonal skills to manage, direct, inspire, and review their personnel — is the aspect of their past peer relationships. No one should ever be denied a promotion because they have close friendships in an organization, but these friendships enter a new dynamic when one is promoted over the other, especially if the newly promoted manager finds themselves in a direct supervisory position over their former peers. These new leaders will need additional coaching and support in this environment, as it will be comfortable to either fall back on old relationships creating a possible fraternization atmosphere or become stressed because of the new dynamic and begin to withdraw and craft avoidance behaviors around their former peers.

Attitude is everything in an organization, and it can be an unpredictable aspect to a newly promoted manager. New positions and responsibilities can mean new stressors, and it can often be difficult to ascertain beforehand how someone will react when placed in a higher-responsibility situation. Leaders should be grown into a new position, not thrown in. Proactive mentorship can provide growing leaders an opportunity to hone their skills, develop the mindsets off of a positive role model, and seek resolutions towards smaller problems and apply these outcomes towards larger ones.

New and growing leaders require support in all aspects of their development. It is no simple event to promote someone and then expect them to have the success in their new position as their last. Senior leaders must cultivate a strong strategy in their organizations for how their personnel will grow and develop over time, provide concrete goals, and paths for how careers can, and will, progress.
These pathways should include adequate support at all levels, in both formal training and education, and informal mentorship. Also, there should be planned job enrichment and expansion for growing leaders to give them time to cultivate and hone these skill-sets which can vary widely from their traditional roles.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Personal Development Women In Business

When Your Toilet is Clogged You Don’t Hire a Chef

No one likes to think about turnover, but it’s a problem that keeps general managers (GM) and business owners up at night. Why? Because deep down you know how critical it is to the bottom line.

Here’s a scenario:

You run a multi-million-dollar dealership and you are hitting the numbers despite margin compression. (Hallelujah) You’re managing to win the volume game. The below-the-line money is essential to keeping the lights on and your team manages to keep their Customer Service Index numbers at passing levels. If you are the GM, the owner stays away for the most part while you continue to help money hit the bank account. If you are a hands-on owner, you cannot stay away because you are steering the ship. This is your legacy.

So, why are you losing sleep?

Could it be the fear of missing your bonus program requirements from the manufacturer and losing the “below the line” money that is vital to your survival? Or is it the fact that you know your toxic sales manager is on the verge of creating a mass exodus on your sales floor and all you can think is, “Hiring is a bitch.” Maybe it is just that you don’t have time to get everything done in a day.

The fact is, you know you have a few core needs that require a shift and you know you need help to make those shifts happen. What you don’t know is where to begin. After speaking with dozens of GMs and owners, it’s become clear to me that, time and again, the place to start is a deep dive into your ethos and an understanding of your level of employee engagement.

When your employees are disengaged, your showroom floor or service drive is a disaster, and your customers turn right back around to the front door to get the hell out of dodge. When you finally get a new employee to start, either they quickly feel the vibe of a lackluster culture and bolt, or they hang on a bit and join the disgruntled masses.

Either way, your managers are tired. They are pushing to hit the numbers to keep you off of their back and their family fed. They don’t have the bandwidth to rein in the culture or to hire right. Frankly, you know this is your responsibility, but, damn it, how can you do it all? The answer is: you can’t and shouldn’t.

When you need your computer fixed, you go to an expert that specializes in technology. When it’s time to replace your air conditioner, you hire an HVAC specialist to do the job. How about your toilet? When it’s clogged, you’re not hiring a chef – or at least I hope not. The reality is that no one person can do everything well, and a successful leader hires the right people to close gaps whether they are environmental or performance-related.

At Shift Awake Group, we specialize in closing the gap on the two critical topics of culture and employee engagement. In order to repair your culture, you have to find out where the bodies are buried and work to mend the cracks in the foundation. Once your culture is repaired, the focus shifts to hiring right the first time while elevating employee engagement and kicking turnover to the curb.

I do not know a single owner or GM that doesn’t want to increase their gross profit margin. Unfortunately, too many believe that focusing on volume will help their income statement and, in turn, everything else will just fix itself. While this can work sometimes, it’s more advantageous to focus on a different, more sustainable metric by increasing your Operating Profit Margins (OPM). When you reduce turnover, costs affecting your overhead are reduced at the same time OPM is increased. When employee engagement improves, simultaneously, there is the perfect storm of opportunity to positively impact gross profit margin with a happier, more fulfilled workforce selling the perfect vehicle to your customer.

If that perfect storm sounds like it could help you finally get a good night’s sleep, it is time to empower an expert to take control of these two pain points that will not spontaneously heal and, in fact, are likely to get worse the more you say they will “fix themselves.”

How can we serve you?

Jacqueline Jasionowski is the founder of Shift Awake Group. Her “soul” mission is to help others connect with their purpose through a higher level of consciousness that will both drive results and enable innovation along the way. Please contact 614.403.6540 for info.

Categories
Growth Management Skills

Building Relative Vision

Vision is relative.

As organizational leaders, we thrive on the big picture. Not one senior leader that I have spoken with has said to me that this is a 9-5 job for them and that their sense of purpose ends when they leave in the evening. As senior organizational leaders and executives, we gain a great deal of motivation though building strategy, charting new courses though unexpected, and often turbulent, waters, and seeing our organizations reach new milestones in their journeys.

However, in every organization I have worked with there is also a level of stratification where the organization’s junior leaders lose this sense of purpose, and an “us versus them” mentality develops. The idea of “here’s the latest bit from the good idea fairy up at corporate, from people who don’t even know what we’re doing down here, which makes our job harder” is prevalent and demoralizing across teams in the majority of businesses.

The facts show this as well, studies published in Harvard Business Review, showcase a significant gap between strategy and execution. This gap presents a high failure rate which is often not based on having a successful plan but in having junior leaders execute successfully on what the senior leadership has proposed.

Though my coaching and consulting in the past two years I have found that the simplest explanation for this is the vision. Junior leadership often adopts the 9-5, just a job mentality, and the organization’s grander vision is reduced to a few bullet points which are posted in the company break room and given out at annual training events. The junior leaders lose their stake, their purpose in the organization is reduced to merely knocking out tasks without a grander idea of how those tasks contribute to the whole. Likewise, senior leaders are looking for people to execute, but provide no more substantial motivation towards that purpose besides, “it’s their job, do it.”

Building a relative vision is critical in today’s agile and change-orientated business environment. Junior leaders must build up their piece of the company’s overall vision. They must learn how their teams contribute, what their effect is on the larger scheme, and how they may more effectively chart a course through uncertain futures. Senior leaders must find the ways to begin bridging this gap. Simply posting company values and outlining KPIs is not enough. They have to become more inclusive in their strategy sessions, including ideas and input from their subordinate leaders, as well as providing mentoring and coaching opportunities towards these leaders’ personal and professional growth. From all these junior leaders must become more imposed to take action and hold ownership over their pieces of an organization; and as their competencies a grown are proven, they must be given more time and space to manage their teams without excessive or obtrusive management oversight.

All this creates a dynamic leadership structure where motivation is derived from a shared sense of purpose and direction. This shared mentality helps join leaders feel their place in business from more than someone who is merely trying to manage their teams time and resources to someone who is an active participant in a company’s success.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

A Servant Heart Dressed in 5” Heels

How important is a servant heart to a successful business? I was reminded of its power on a cloudy September Wednesday.

I had been preparing to visit a particular dealership for months, and had the pleasure of speaking to the owner’s assistant several times to organize logistics. My first impression was that she was capable, well-spoken and kind, and I was looking forward to meeting her.

On the day of my visit, I tried entering through the front, but it was before 8:00 a.m. and the locked door wouldn’t budge. I started to walk around the building and caught the eye of a woman headed toward the side door. She walked quickly in her 5” inch heels to greet me with a smile, a bear hug and a, “Nice to meet you! I’m the owner of the dealership.” I instantly knew I was in for a fun day.

Positive first impressions were confirmed throughout my visit. The assistant I’d been communicating with also greeted me with a warm smile and hug, as well as a binder filled with the day’s agenda. When the owner and I became engaged in a winding conversation that put us behind schedule, she jokingly said she would have to manage the “two of you.”

As we toured the dealership, the owner smiled and greeted her team everywhere we went. When she asked about her employees’ weekends and introduced me, she was met with smiles, hugs and laughter in return—even at 8:00 in the morning.

We both clearly had a lot of practice in stilettos, and when we dashed over to service, she bent down to pick up a loose piece of paper on the driveway and throw it into the trash. Her actions consistently reflected that she was all in as a leader and walked the talk. We went into the lobby and she chatted with a customer about his morning and asked if the coffee was hot enough.

As we continued, I learned about the many unusual strategies she employed to make her dealership a standout. For example, her sales team members are called Life Improvement Specialists and they adhere to a no commission / no negotiation model designed to take fear and frustration out of the car-buying process. Their whole motivation is to improve the lives of their customers.

In addition, “The Go Giver” is required reading for her employees, and they live and breathe the Bob Burg and John David Mann ideal that states, “Success is the result of specific habits of action: creating value, touching people’s lives, putting others’ interests first, being real, and having the humility to stay open to receiving.”

That ideal is expressed in an annual holiday event where employees serve hot food, offer gently used clothing to families in need, and give presents to children. Last year, they served over 2,000 underprivileged adults and children in their community.

This amazing leader received some of that goodwill in return when her team gifted her with a spin certification to help in her fight against diabetes. She kind of has her hands full running a multi-million-dollar business! Once certified she opted not to take a second job and instead revamped the store’s upstairs, purchased several spin bikes and started teaching spin three times a week to her employees. As a result, one staff member has lost over 100 pounds and improved his health. On occasion, a customer will even join class because word on the street is that she has an amazing playlist.

While I’m trying to illustrate how this leader’s servant heart affects her employees, community and business, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of this collective group of amazing human beings (a.k.a. angels on earth). This leader truly embodies the conscious-based mindset I write and talk about, and it was amazing to witness firsthand how making conscious decisions results in happier employees as well as happier customers.

For this business owner, leadership is not an option—it is a responsibility. She models the actions she expects from her team with every step she takes—which enables a supportive and profitable place to work. In return, her actions inspire her people to hold space for their customers to enjoy the experience of purchasing or servicing their vehicle. Throughout my day with her, I was in awe. Just when I thought I couldn’t be any more surprised about this team, they would share another jaw-dropping example of how they were changing the automotive industry.

As a professional who lives to espouse consciousness in business, I have dreamt about this kind of dealership environment. This leader has fallen in love with her employees and customers. She has found a way around the fears and frustrations of her people and removed them. Her ability to innovate through conscious-based decision-making positively affects all of her stakeholders and puts her far ahead of the competition.

The lesson here is that innovation is no longer just in the form of high tech, but in high touch. Tapping into emotion is a game-changing super power that few leaders know about yet. However, I believe that education will yield more conscious-based automotive brands that change the way employees and customers experience our industry.

Five-inch heels are encouraged, but purely optional.

Jacqueline Jasionowski is the founder of Shift Awake Group. Her “soul” mission is to help others connect with their purpose through a higher level of consciousness that will both drive results and enable innovation along the way. Please contact 614.403.6540 for info.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Personal Development

How to Identify the Best Candidates for Leadership Training

Leadership training programs offer your organization many important benefits, including:

  • A cost-effective and efficient way to fill your top jobs by promoting excellent performers from within your organization.
  • A powerful motivator that encourages your most talented managers to stay in your company for the long term.
  • An opportunity to create a strong cross-functional leadership team of individuals who bring extensive experience from different sectors of your organization.

Those are all important reasons to invest in leadership training. But before you start to design a leadership training program, let’s take a step back and ask an important preliminary question . . .

How can you select the best candidates to take part in your leadership training?

In a Breakthrough Ideas in Training webinar for Tortal Training Dr. Keith Halperin, Senior Partner at Korn Ferry, outlined these four “leadership dimensions” that should influence your choice of trainees and your training goals.

Experience – For the Korn Ferry leadership consulting team, experience is part of a process. Dr. Halperin and his team identify the most critical experiences that a company’s leaders have had in the past. They then create training that exposes leadership trainees to those same experiences.

Traits – These are specific competencies that leaders need in order to be successful in your organization. Identifying them requires study of your current leaders. Do they have experience doing business internationally, for example? Are they keen marketers, communicators, financial analysts, or something else? Once you have a fuller picture of key traits, you can select the strongest candidates and design training that cultivates the traits that they will need as they move into leadership positions.

Drivers – “Leading is hard work that takes energy and passion,” Dr. Halperin told the webinar. Before selecting candidates for leadership training, it is important to evaluate whether they really have the drive to want to handle the challenges of top leadership positions, or whether they’ll take your training just because it’s the next step up the ladder.

Competencies – Competencies are abilities that leaders are capable of developing. In his webinar, Dr. Halperin cited “Learning Agility” as one of the most important; it means a person’s ability to move into unknown situations, adjust to uncertainty, and understand what needs to be done. Learning agility also means the ability to learn lessons from past experiences that apply to new situations. Other competencies can include the abilities to earn trust, lead change and create a culture of innovation.

About Evan Hackel

Evan Hackel is CEO of Tortal Training, a leading training development company, and principal and founder of Ingage Consulting. He is the host of Training Unleashed podcast, and author of the book Ingaging Leadership. Evan speaks on Seeking Excellence, Better Together, Ingaging Leadership, and Attitude is Everything. To hire Evan as a speaker, visit evanhackelspeaks.com and follow Evan on Twitter @ehackel.