Leading Effectively Series
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Last Thursday I was at a meeting with some of the leadership of the Singapore Ministry of Health. It was a lively and well-informed group and they didn't need any of my expertise about executive coaching. The questions that were occupying them were about why a supervisor, manager or executive needs the same skills that professional coaches use. We teach that leaders can be more effective if they have a coaching mindset and coaching skills, but what does that mean? As they pointed out, executives seldom have time to take a 1/2 hour to hold a "coaching session."
Coaching can be useful for both improving performance and developing others, but it may look quite different in practice. For the active manager, coaching happens in the moment, in the hallway, or walking from a meeting. It doesn't usually require an appointment - just an opportunity.
 Take the not-unusual problem of a direct report coming to you with a complaint about the performance of a peer on a project. This can be approached in a variety of ways, but I think a coaching approach may be the most promising from the desirable results point of view.
Let's consider the alternatives a manager has. Presumably the manager could agree to go talk with the peer and solve the problem. Depending on the approach the manager takes,the peer may be resentful, feel betrayed by the co-worker, or find it helpful to get some assistance. However, no matter how skilled the intervention by the manager, it will not improve the working relationship between the two peers because one of them ran to a greater authority. The best that can be hoped for is compliance in the present project and postponement of the conflict to the next joint project.
So, let us suppose that our imaginary manager resists the temptation to fix the difference between two others. Let us suppose that the manager uses a directive approach to save time and get the problem off his or her plate. "Go. Work this out between you!" seems likes a better option, but it also has some inherent limitations. There's no telling how well prepared the direct report is to actually work it out effectively. It is likely that the only certain result is that the direct report who has come with the problem feels ignored and may add that frustration to the irritation she already feels with the co-worker who's not carrying his share. How likely is it that the next meeting they have will be productive?
Perhaps a coaching approach could yield a positive result without taking a lot of time. What would that look like? One of the key components of a coaching mindset is a determination to let the person coached keep responsibility for the solution. So a coaching leader will respond without taking over the problem. Questions are the preferred medium. "What have you done so far to solve this?" could be a good opening. "What else could you do?" "What do you know about why your colleague is not delivering?"
These questions have the effect of enlarging the range of actions that the direct report can consider. They take about the same length of time as giving advice or issuing an order, but they create the possibility that the person being coached will take a new tack, try a different approach, and keep at it. They reduce the chance that you will make it worse through intervening (since no one can actually solve a conflict between two others). More importantly, they imply that you have confidence in the intelligence, good intentions, and capability of your direct report. More clearly than just announcing, "I have confidence in you!", it communicates the truth of that. The questions above are just the start, but perhaps you would like to give them a try and see what happens.
 When you add coaching to your repertoire of management and leadership skills, you enlarge the range of actions available, you encourage your direct reports to stretch themselves, to consider alternatives. And you create the opportunity for them to feel pride in accomplishment when they do make it work. Coaching approaches are not the best for everything (you still need to direct, organize, advise, and teach), but they are a valuable tool in your box.
~Doug Riddle
 Infighting blocks progress. How often do we see that headline? Recently, Government Executive reported that a lack of collaboration created a challenge between the Defense Contracting Audit Agency and the Defense Contracting Management Agency. The article discusses the challenge they have related to working with a contractor. It led me to wonder how much money is wasted because of a lack of collaboration.
What causes inability to collaborate? Leaders everywhere must ask themselves, beginning by looking in circles around their own desk. First, they must ask their teams how they collaborate. I think it would lead to an excellent coaching and learning conversation. What would happen if the leader of a team asked his colleagues to provide the following information:
Who do you collaborate with outside our team/agency/department?
Why do you collaborate with them?
What results do you get from that collaboration?
What lessons did you learn from that form of collaboration?
The leader might ask the team to provide this information for just one contact a week. This type of information begins a rudimentary network analysis for the team leader, helping him or her understand where the key connectors are outside of their office. Connectors are the key process or individual moving the issue effortlessly across boundaries.
They will also learn the barriers and perhaps even gaps in collaboration that may need bridging. Barriers can be formal and required, such as legislation needed to keep contractors and regulators separate. Barriers can also be informal and ill-advised, such as challenges with authority, power, and ego.
Identifying the collaborative networks is the leader’s job. It helps the leader and the team fully realize their reach and their resources. Understanding this reach helps the leader determine the formal and informal barriers to process and communication within the office.
A complete picture of collaboration allows the leader to identify the strengths and challenges of both formal and informal barriers, developing tools to create a more efficient process. This efficiency, built on a strong sense of direction, will reinforce alignment within the team and outside the team, increasing the team’s effectiveness. When effectiveness increases and is recognized by key stakeholders, it leads to increased commitment, both internal and external to the team.
In essence, then, collaboration = greater commitment. Think of what that commitment can do to. It may lead to less infighting and better governance. ~Clemson Turregano
A colleague of mine recently wanted to incorporate content from a book I recently edited into a session she was facilitating. Over the course of a multi-session program, issues about oppression and inequity were coming to the forefront. It was if there was a constant hum (like vuvuzelasat the World Cup games in South Africa) that was preventing messages from being heard clearly. Something was in the air, and something needed to happen.
To my colleague's credit, she listened and she acted. It sounds obvious, but quite often issues related to social identity tensions are not addressed. Why not? Well, because they are often complex and difficult issues to talk about, we don't see it as "our job" to deal with it, we think perhaps it isn't that big a deal and it'll go away, and frankly, we don't know what to do and we don't want to make the situation any worse.
 But guess what? Doing nothing is an action; it isn't the absence of one.
Doing nothing can give rise to gossip about the leaders' stance; maybe he or she condones the situation, maybe he or she is on one side and not another, maybe they just don't care. What can be hard to remember is that problems fester before they are brought to the attention of leaders. It takes a lot of courage to speak up about these issues, and not everyone is willing to take a risk.
Imagine working like heck against a stream of negative assumptions and low expectations to finally reach a position you really wanted. Something would have to matter quite a bit for you to risk being seen as a stereotype, again.
If you ever wonder why someone seems to always raise a perspective that is related to their social identity it may be because it matters and they do not feel heard.
If you ever wonder why someone can't just get over it, ask yourself if you truly understand what you are asking them to "get over." Take time to listen, ask questions, and get curious about their perspective.
Even if we don't understand or don't know what to do, we can at least acknowledge that someone else's experience is real, that we care, and we may find out that there is something we can do.
~Kelly Hannum
I've been interviewing leaders and followers for years about the impact of leaders' behavior on their organizations and their people. I've come to a somewhat disturbing if obvious conclusion: a good deal of their impact is completely unintentional.
We spend a lot of our energy thinking about what to say and what not to, how to introduce strategic change, and how to improve morale, for instance. Yet, there are plenty of indicators that people around us pay much more attention to what we don't say and what we don't follow up on than what we do.
Leaders are constantly watched and the people who depend on their beneficence for a livelihood are continuously interpreting every expression, tone of voice, mood, like and dislike, and noticing exactly what they notice. Yet many leaders think their periodic official pronouncements should be all that is remembered and should somehow outweigh the stream of behavior, speech, emotion, and choices that is flowing the rest of the time.
Humans are conclusion-drawing animals and we will never leave dots unconnected.
One CEO told me a couple years ago, "I can't believe people still hold the one time I got a little heated up against me after two years!" I could assure him that his people would remember his angry outburst for a lot longer than two years. Particularly since it was accompanied by a persistently gravelly demeanor that suggested it might erupt again at any time.
 Repeatedly I've heard senior leaders complain about the lack of courage of the managers who report to them (privately, of course). Observation of their team meetings led me to wonder why anyone would risk the public drubbing the executives thought mild.
Leaders are amplified human beings. Senior executives in particular would do well to imagine that they are being broadcast across their domains at high volume. Their asides are remembered and repeated in the hallways and duplicated in text messages that spread much faster and with greater attention than any formal communication. What you whisper can be deafening to those whose antennae are turned to high sensitivity. And that would include nearly everyone who is downstream from you in your organization.
So, should you be more careful? Only if you want to make it worse. Nothing makes us more anxious than becoming conscious that someone is trying hard not to upset us. The only way out of this conundrum is what my friends Kerry Bunker and Michael Wakefield call authenticity. (You can read their book on leading through change for a more elegant discursion - and for full disclosure, the book is a CCL publication.)
For now, here are a few clues I've gleaned over the decades:
- Own the public reality of you. Be the first to embrace your embarrassing record of appalling behavior. Neither glory in it nor subject the rest of us to your earnest repentance. Just admit it and do what you can to pay attention for a change.
- Gather trusted friends and dependable enemies around you to give you the straight dope on the alarming reverberations of your blind trampling. Listen to them and add the feedback to clue number one.
- Recognize the size disparity: you think you’re just a regular person. Those who depend on you experience you as massive. Listen to everyone, weigh everything, and do what is right for the organization without being dragged down by the well-deserved criticisms of your thinking, decisions, communication, intelligence, and moral failures. We need you to be a leader. You can do that without being either a brick or a milksop.
- You’re a powerful symbol of the company. You represent. Whether you take yourself seriously or not, take seriously the iconic value you provide. A clerical friend of mine once threw a bible in the trash to make the point that the content was holy but the paper and leather were not. His ministry never recovered. You are the symbol and the voice for the identity and aspirations of your organization. When you accepted leadership, you gave up the right to indulge in indifferent self-expression.
Your iconic friend,
Doug
During a recent conversation with a couple of friends, the name of one of their peers came up. This other person worked at a different plant than the one my friends worked in. Apparently, he was a vocal and influential voice in arguing the benefits and outcomes of his location versus the one that employs my friends, and in the process he created divides that sapped the company's creative energy. Hearing this story, the only response I could muster was "how quaint." Here's a leader and an influential voice constrained by the idea of place as a seat of power. But "place" is no longer an idea with much currency.
Remember last year's tumultuous elections in Iran? There was a time when that turmoil would have been locked away behind the borders of a nation-state, released in sanctioned press releases and the dispatches of foreign correspondents. Even the word "correspondent" is reminiscent of someone writing a letter - a one-way communication from one place to another. But digital photos and video and voice recordings poured over Iran's border and around the planet - the place called Iran was usurped by the space of Iran - the space that hosted discussions around water coolers and coffee shops, on 24/7 newscasts, during Facebook sessions, fueled countless Twitter feeds, and made millions of people around the world concerned citizens.
Anthropologist and cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai coined the use of "scapes" to describe the flow of material and ideas across what he has called "the social imaginary." I like to think of the social imaginary as the space of contemporary leadership. It's a space where boundaries and borders become replaced by perceptions and horizons. CCL has examined that space from various angles, most recently in its development of research-based boundary-spanning leadership practices.
Leaders who release themselves from a reliance on place, geography, functions, org charts, and other such border markers potentially can find, to paraphrase Shakespeare's Hamlet, something beyond the dread of the "undiscovered country." That dread can cause some leaders to "lose the name of action."The flow of ideas into action, more so than boundaries, borders, or limits, names the human space from which contemporary leadership struggles to emerge. We are all marking our steps differently now.
~ Pete Scisco
 In the past few months, successful college football coaches Mark Mangino (University of Kansas), Mike Leach (Texas Tech University), and Jim Leavitt (University of South Florida) left or were forced from their respective positions stemming from inappropriate behavior towards their players. From an outside perspective, they could be characterized as bullies. Mangino resigned under mounting pressure when word got out that he verbally abused players with insensitive and humiliating remarks and also physically grabbed his players. Leach was dismissed after he allegedly approved that a player with a concussion be put in a storage/electrical shed. And finally, Leavitt was fired after purportedly lying about an incident where he held a player by the throat and struck him in the face. This is not the first, nor the last time that such bullying has led to the demise of a well-known coach. Former college basketball great Bobby Knight comes to mind, as does Frank Martin (Kansas State) who was recently caught - on television mind you- hitting one of his players on the arm during a game. Martin apologized for his actions and is still coaching.
However, bullying is not just reserved for the sports’ arena; sometimes, unfortunately, bullying is a part of organizational life. Professor Gerald Ferris from Florida State University, a well-respected researcher and someone in my research network, co-wrote a 2007 article for Leadership Quarterly that included two of my friends (Robert Zinko of ECU and Robyn Brouer at Buffalo) that details bullying as a part of organizational politics. They define bullying as strategically selected tactics of influence usually pointed at those in submissive, less-powerful positions for the achievement of personal and/or organizational goals. In essence, they believe that bullying acts as a type of persona that leaders can assume if all else fails. Behaviors can include emotional outbursts used at strategic times and should not be confused, nor grouped, with destructive leadership behaviors such as sustained displays of hostile, rude, discourteous, and tyrannical behavior. The type of bullying Ferris and his co-authors detail can, under the right circumstances, produce potentially positive outcomes such as short-term effects on job performance (not long-term however). In addition, bullying “immature” workers may force them to either “get the point” and “shape up” or better yet, compel them to “ship out” so that the position can be filled with someone more appropriate, mature, and just plain easier to work with.
 So, is bullying in the workplace wrong? Probably, especially if you follow in the fired coaches’ footsteps – physically and verbally abusing players/staff – and do so repeatedly. Can it be effective? According to research, it may prove somewhat effective if used infrequently and strategically, and its use is geared for short-term improvements rather than long-term results. What are your thoughts? Have you ever bullied effectively (or ineffectively) and what were the outcomes? Have you ever been on the receiving end? What were the results?
Care to read the Leadership Quarterly article?
Ferris, G. R., Zinko, R., Brouer, R. L., Buckley, M. R., & Harvey, M. G. (2007). Strategic bullying as a supplementary, balanced perspective on destructive leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 195-206.
Photo Credit: Fist Charles Dodds Fight Kai Schreiber
©iStockphoto.com/pkline
For 35 years I've prided myself on running pretty good meetings. I keep people on the topic, complete the task, ensure everyone has a chance to contribute (even those shy or anxious members), and focus on action outcomes with accountability. But it doesn’t take much for a meeting leave the tracks and plunge into the icy waters below.
In fact, all it takes is forgetting to surface the hidden expectations and assumptions that everyone is carrying when they enter. I had to learn that again recently when I led a meeting to make some policy recommendations for the Center.
On the surface the meeting went well. Everyone spoke, although some more than others. One of the members had written a memo that sparked the meeting, so that person contributed more than others, but that would be expected, wouldn’t it? We’d had over a week of a virtual data collection process in which a wide range of other professional staff had been invited to write their experiences or expert advice. I asked that each person open the meeting with any concerns they’d like to raise and then we proceeded on the basis of proposals. We got them all covered in the two hours allotted and I took the results and wrote a summary.
So, how did I know that the meeting was a flop? Every member of the group (and a few other colleagues) called or wrote me after the meeting with a proposal to either strengthen or revise the recommendations I’d collected in the summary.
Why weren’t these raised in the meeting? Of course, it’s possible some people hadn’t really given the issue enough attention in the days leading up to the meeting. However, when I questioned those who communicated later, I found that a whole set of hidden assumptions had sunk our little ship:
1. “Doug, I expected that you, as an expert in this, would have spoken up more.”
2. “I didn’t want to be seen as just pushing my own agenda.”
3. “I didn’t feel like getting into an open conflict with ______.”
4. “I don’t think I really understood what was being asked of us.”
They all seem reasonable issues to me. They should have been addressed in the meeting.
So, what are the lessons I’m taking from this?
1. When everyone’s attention is stretched thin, it may take two meetings: one to get participants to really focus and understand the issues and context, and another to knock out something that can stand.
2. Taking time to get clear about the purpose of the meeting, the roles to be played by each of the participants, and the group norms can save a lot of time later.
3. I should trust my gut. If I’m feeling hurried or anxious or frustrated, there’s a good chance I’m responding to something emerging in the group. Take time to figure out what it is and if I can’t figure it out, ask the group.
Why is it that the hardest lessons to learn are the ones we have known all along?
Good luck with your meetings,
Doug
 When we lack the capacity to effectively communicate with one another, metaphor can provide the means. It has been said that leadership takes heart and requires a certain amount of verbal acumen. Well what happens when we can no longer find our voice and our hearts are literally ripped from our chests? Joss Whedon explores this struggle in his Emmy-nominated, Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Hush.”
Those not familiar with the Buffy lore (and shame on you), Buffy Summers is The Chosen One – the one girl chosen in all the world to fight the vampires and demons – all while attempting to survive young adulthood. She juggles the responsibilities of saving the world from certain destruction while trying to discover why she can’t maintain a healthy relationship with the opposite sex. If you thought high school was hell, try living on the Hellmouth.
In this particular episode, a pack of Brothers Grimm-like fiends known as The Gentlemen arrive in the dead of night and proceed to steal the voices of Sunnydale’s residents as they sleep. While it is obviously upsetting to wake and find oneself mute, the true horror of the situation is not made clear until the following night when The Gentlemen begin to collect what they are truly after - the hearts of the townspeople. Losing one’s voice may be unsettling and inconvenient, however terror quickly settles in when you realize that, scream all you want, no one is going to hear you.
But what does any of this have to do with the real world? How does a stake-wielding blonde make her way into a leadership blog? As the Buffy gang sings in another episode, “Where do we go from here?”
We hear time an again how effective communication is imperative. We’re coached on active listening skills, etiquette, and verbiage - yet we rarely discuss within the workplace the emphasis non-verbal communication has on the meaning of our message. Of course personal experiences will play a part in meaning-making, however it is sometimes what is left unsaid that imports the most impact. When a co-worker loses a close family member, the gentle squeeze of a hand can convey so much more than the mere, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss.”
So where does metaphor come in? Metaphor is a vehicle. It provides us with a means of expression when words fail us or an illustration would better convey our message. Rousseau wrote “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.” He is not implying that we are literally chained to our desks, our homes, and our families. Rather, he provides a metaphor that society has saddled us (another metaphor) with certain responsibilities and expectations that is virtually impossible to escape. In the Buffy episode, Whedon uses metaphor on several of levels.
When Sunnydale’s inhabitants literally begin to lose their hearts to the Gentlemen, the survivors find themselves reassessing their current relationships or lack thereof. Suddenly, conversations that seemed too difficult to broach in the past become less complicated without the need to “talk about it.” Actions become more accountable. Up until now, Buffy and her current love interest Riley have had one awkward conversation after another, each trying to conceal their hidden identity from the other. Coincidentally, it’s not until they loose their ability to speak that the characters make any real physical contact. It’s not until they are surprised to find themselves in the same room, holding their own against a common enemy that they begin to understand the depth of one another’s character.
So what is being left unsaid in your workplace?
We're fascinated by the reasons that things go wrong. And they go wrong quite often. Sometimes in spectacularly unpleasant ways; sometimes in a slow slide into irrelevance. Whole industries are devoted to the diagnosis of failure and there are some lovely, detailed models of organizational disaster. I'm persuaded that in many cases there is a simple, accessible common factor that affects us as individuals and as organizations. It's anxiety. Actually, it's rather the difficulty individuals and organizations have managing their anxiety. This lens has been helpful to me as I've watched smart, talented people and organizations drive themselves into the ground.
It happens when the whole focus of attention is on the risks and dangers of living in this difficult world. While I'm not so pollyanna that I think we should only focus on our strengths and opportunities, it isn't difficult to get into an obsessive preoccupation with managing risks, real and imagined. I used to think it was something we could blame on the corporate legal department, because it's their job to identify and hedge the organization against excessive risk. But now I think it has more to do with the way we react to potential risk: we let it control our business choices.
It manifests in a couple of ways in organizational life. One occurs when organizations begin to multiply their policies and rules to cover every potential problem. The paradox is that contracts and policies that build in protections from every type of malfeasance or negligence define the relationship as fundamentally absent of trust. That is, they communicate more than limits or boundaries; they also communicate an implicit expression of the relationship itself. Perhaps more importantly, the multiplication of rules and policies has a chilling effect on creativity and innovation. When there are many rules, it becomes the first responsibility of employees to check to make sure that they are not violating them.
Then comes the documentation. While documentation is important to preserve records of actions and ensure reporting, the need to document everything can mean that 20 to 30% of the creative energy of the organization is diverted from customer service, product development, or business strategy. Some businesses find that filling out forms is their new business model. New rules and requirements in HR policy or in contracts should be subject to their own rigorous risk assessment: do they add sufficient incremental safety to justify the additional negative impact on climate and workload?
Last week I met a consultant whose firm focuses on performance improvement through people policies and practices. She told me several stories of companies who had accelerated the aggregation of HR policies, thereby clearly communicating to the workforce that none of them could be trusted and they were expected to attempt to steal everything possible from the company. She said something that CCL believes most fervently: you can't change performance if you don't address the culture. She has proposed a single sentence HR policy: Every employee is expected to work for the best interests of the company and its customers and employees.
A culture of distrust (and its cousin: control) cannot spawn an organization where everyone gives their best. That kind of culture only comes where leaders believe in the capability and generosity of their follows. Unfortunately, when the market is down and the strategy isn't working all that well, it becomes easy to blame the attitudes of the workforce. Or when someone goes off the track, it's easy to clamp down on everyone. The multiplication of "zero tolerance" policies shows how quickly we accede to the hierarchical solution; even if the result is the arrest of 5-year-olds for carrying camping utensils for show-and-tell.
Compliance is not creativity.
Control is not commitment.
Passion, creativity, commitment: these are all freely given or they are not given at all.
Our culture is flailing in a sea of anxiety...about the economy, about jobs, about competing on the world stage. This is the time to reinforce our commitment to collaboration, to mutual trust, to shared goals. When anxious, our best escape is in a return to core values. We need to line up with people who are leading the way to positive environments, inspiring innovation, making high performance a pleasure.
Find them. Shine a light on their energy and grant others the freedom to do it, too.
Doug
The word "entitlement" basically means getting something because it's your right to have it - it's not a matter of earning it. On the other hand "empowerment" is about building confidence and capacity in order to gain access – to rights, to resources, to information, to services, etc. – in order to shape one’s life and surroundings.
The crossroad where entitlement and empowerment meet is charged with emotion.
Those of us in a dominant status group may be so used to certain rights and privileges, we feel entitled to them and abashed at the thought we wouldn’t have them and feel those without aren't doing something "right." Those of us in a non-dominant group may struggle towards empowerment in order to get glimpses of a life others take for granted, wondering why it has to be so hard.
There are a plethora of indicators, but none that give a sense of the overall feeling people have about their lot. I suspect, based on gut feeling, that with the recent roller-coaster economy more people are realizing that what they thought they were entitled to – a job, a house, a retirement - is no longer in their grasp. And those who still “have” are probably holding on a lot tighter.
 But what does that mean for us – all of us?
Germany, among other nations, has adopted kurzarbeit - shortened work hours so more people can keep their job. In contrast to lay-offs, with kurzarbeit everyone loses a little so everyone can keep a little.
I wonder if this feeling can extend to other areas – beyond a paycheck? I suspect that spreading opportunity (becoming collectively empowered) would do more to move our entire lot forward than having the dream of being able to move into one of the narrowing slots reserved for those who are entitled.
I find it telling that folks in the middle class tend to give more (percentage-wise) to charities than those in more affluent groups. Chances are they have a better idea of what it's like to need a break and that sometimes it has more to do with circumstance than personal character.
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