The Stress of Leadership Growth

Special Episode 001 – The Stress Of Leadership Growth

The Stress of Leadership Growth

I’ve called it a special Q&A Friday because today’s show addresses a conversation I had not long ago with an executive who had successfully endured the stress of leadership growth (and some questions he asked). It’s a very real pain that every leader will feel if they’re pushing toward improvement. I see in every client. For some, it happens quickly. Others, it happens after months and months of arduous work. And the reaction of leaders differs wildly. Some get angry – at themselves and the situation. Others get angry with others. Yes, some even get angry with me – the messenger helping them to see things more clearly. That’s okay though because service demands value. I’m here to do whatever is in the best interest of the client. I want them to become their very best. If being remarkable were easy, everybody would do it.

It’s About A Heightened Awareness Of The Truth About Yourself

The very best leaders push past this stress and tension to a place where their growth soars. I encourage you to keep doing the work. Push past the pain. You’ll be very glad you did. So will your organization.

Enjoy.

Randy

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Leadership Communication: Don't Talk, Teach - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE Podcast Episode 283

283 Leadership Communication: Don’t Talk, Teach

Leadership Communication: Don't Talk, Teach - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE Podcast Episode 283

Leadership communication is the responsibility of the leader. Sounds basic and fundamental, but it has caused grief with some clients of mine in the past. People can be quick to point out how the receiver has a responsibility to get it right. I know, I know. But communication is not a 50-50 proposition. Ever.

The burden is always on the person doing the communicating. All of it? No, but most of it.

A person groping to find the words, stammering around searching for the right phrase and otherwise bumbling around is not going to have a good experience in being understood. It’s their fault. They have to shoulder the responsibility to be properly understood. Put me on a plane and drop me off in Italy. I’m going to be looking for somebody who speaks English because I don’t speak Italian. It won’t be the fault of the poor Italian citizen I encounter. It’ll be my fault because I don’t know how to communicate in their language. I can get mad. I can pitch a fit. I can blame the Italian citizen. But it’s my fault because I just can’t effectively communicate with them.

Sometimes leaders fail to understand that burden. They look at their work force and blame misunderstandings on the employees. Some seem to get it. Others seem lost. Others clearly are lost. The leader surveys the troops and concludes he’s got some idiots working for him. Well, that may be, but their idiocy may not be the problem in failing to understand. It could be the leader is speaking in a way – or communicating – in a way that just isn’t easy to understand.

I’m fanatical about clear communication. Clear means direct, candid and easy to understand. Clear communication is without conflict or misunderstanding. Sadly, it’s too rare.

Emotional Intelligence

the ability to recognize one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior

This is a key to effective communication because one of the things that can get in the way, our emotions! This can be especially true in high performing organizations. Pressure and intensity tend to bring about exaggerated emotions in some people. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people, or overly sensitive. It just means they’re wired in a particular way. I don’t think people are unable to improve or remedy weaknesses, but I do believe we all have our tendencies. That is, we’re naturally inclined a certain way. Some people cry more easily than others. Some people have a tough time showing any emotion. Knowing and understanding how people respond to certain situations impacts our ability to connect with them. And communicate effectively with them.

Confront an employee who is upset and snap at them to shape up. See how that works for you. It won’t. They’re emotionally charged up. Bert Decker, famed communications expert, says the most powerful communicators reach not just our minds, but our hearts: They win our trust. I think he’s right. In order to do that, we first have to acknowledge how people feel. What upsets them. What fuels them. What scares them. What exhilarates them. Leaders need to know those things and recognize them. That has to happen before any effective communication can take place.

Call center employees fail miserably at it, but they’re given scripts to try to do just this – especially when we call them and we’re upset. “I understand how you must feel, Mr. Cantrell,” she says. I feel patronized. I know she’s reading a script. And I know it’s not her fault, but it angers me anyway. Things have just gone from bad to worse because she works for idiots who think merely reciting the words is effective communication. It’s not. And we all know how it feels when it doesn’t work.

On the other hand, if a close friend or somebody you trust acknowledges how you feel and they express sympathy, coupled with an offer to help us…we can’t help but feel better. It can instantly put our head in a much more receptive place for effective communication. It’s the difference in being genuine and real versus being contrived and scripted. Good leaders aren’t contrived. Or phony. They’re real. Mostly, they’re really interested in helping their employees grow and improve.

This isn’t a tactic. It’s human interaction. It’s how we feel. Ignore it at your peril. Your leadership hinges on getting this right.

Enter work barking orders, growling and biting. Sure, you’ll provoke a flurry of activity, but it won’t all be meaningful. Or productive. Maybe you’ll feel better, thinking you’re really driving your people to higher performance, but instead…you’ll be driving the life force right out of people.

Can you be a good boss, but a bad leader? Can you be a good leader, but be a bad boss?

Sometimes people engage me in debating these questions. I answer the same way each time. “It depends.” The context determines the answer. Context plays a major role in leadership. Besides, there are definitions required. What does it mean to be “the boss?” The owner of the business might be the “boss,” but he may not be anywhere on the radar of the company leadership. Too many questions to ask and answer before any meaningful debate can be had about these questions.

But…

I do think there can be distinctions between being the boss and being the leader. And I think it just might be possible to be good at one, and not the other. But in my work with leaders and executives I don’t distinguish the two. I want the boss to be an exceptional leader and I want the leader to be a great boss. That’s what the employees want. Better yet, that’s what they need.

There are other components to effective leadership, but can any of them exist if there’s not first effective communication? I don’t know of any. By definition, a leader accomplishes things through helping other people. Leaders need followers. The effectiveness of the followers determines the effectiveness of the leader. So much for the tyrant who think he’s a stellar leader, but he’s just surrounded by incompetence. His followers are a reflection of his leadership (or lack of). Since we’re not clairvoyant, we have to communicate what we want, how we want it and when we want it. We do that with words.

Quality, Not Quantity

does-not-mean-they-understand
Looks like they’re listening, but do they understand?

An old preacher friend of mine once told me, “Everybody thinks muddy water is deep.” We had been discussing another preacher who was notorious for preaching over an hour. The long-winded preacher was known for preaching in a very professorial tone. He would hold forth, using big, fancy words. My old friend got it right. People would marvel about the long-winded preacher. Some would even emerge from listening to him and say, “I have no idea what he said, but he’s really smart.” Sometimes leaders communicate the same way. They spend more time trying to razzle dazzle the troops than in just making sure the troops know what they’re saying.

Words have meaning, but only if the employees understand them. Every work place has a vocabulary unique to them. But hopefully you do a good job of onboarding new employees so they know what you’re talking about. But what about all those fancy (or trite) buzzwords and phrases that so often creep into organizational life? One such phrase I hear almost everywhere I go is “employee engagement.” There’s nothing wrong with that phrase, but I’m often asked – mostly by employees – what does THAT mean? More often I’m asked by employees what the bosses want in the way of improved employee engagement. It’s a classic case of leadership often neglecting the elephant in the room – helping employees fully understand what the exercise is all about by telling them plainly about the desired outcome.

“What do they mean?”

“What do they want?”

Employees spend far more time than leaders realize just trying to figure out what was really said. Or what was really meant. Just because they appear to be listening doesn’t mean they understand.

Who’s most responsible for understanding?

No, it’s not a riddle. It’s not a chicken and egg deal. Nor is it a trick question.

The top boss tells me how he thinks it’s the burden of his direct reports to “get it.” He’s talking about his staff meetings and the ability of his executive team to know what he means. “If they don’t understand, I think it’s their responsibility to get clarification. How am I supposed to know if they don’t understand unless they tell me, or ask questions?”

I don’t argue with him because I agree with him, in part. We all bear a responsibility to understand. Especially executives tasked with leading the troops. However, it’s unfair to put the burden on the listener or recipient of the message – any message. I can talk with my little granddaughter using words she can’t possibly understand. Does that make it her fault that she can’t understand? Or is it mine? You know the right answer. But at work we sometimes fail to get it. We put undue pressure on the employees to really understand our directives, our wishes, our opinions and just about anything else that comes out of our mouth, or our writing. That includes our texting and our emails.

But I’m not teaching…

I don’t mean teaching in the traditional classroom setting sort of way. I mean it in the way of transmitting information that is accurately understood and useful. “Teach me now to drive a manual transmission,” asks a new teen driver of his dad. All the stuff dad does to teach his child how to drive a standard transmission involves effective communication. I know, I know. You’re not teaching your employees how to drive a manual transmission. But you are teaching them what you expect, how to deliver what you expect and all the other details of their work performance.

You’d better be. If you’re not, my question is, WHY NOT?

Employees are frustrated by a leader who operates without clarity. Too many senior executives have said, “I just want them to do the right thing.” Or, “I want them to reach the conclusion on their own.”

My wife and I successfully raised two teenagers. They’re both grown with kids of their own now. They mostly make their own decisions now, but my wife had a hand in forming their view of the world, their view of themselves and how they’ve decided to operate as adults. During their teen years we were teaching and training. It involved lots of communication. We didn’t sit around as their parents hoping they’d figure it out, or hoping they’d dazzle us in a surprisingly positive way. No, we clearly communicated (taught) what we expected from them, how they could deliver on those expectations and then we held them accountable. Do you still want to tell me that you don’t need to teach when you communicate?

You’re either teaching your employees to know expectations and how to achieve them — or you’re willing to let them figure it out on their own. That begs the question…

What’s a leader for? Why do your people need you?

The role of the leader is to serve the employees by helping them achieve things they couldn’t otherwise achieve. That’s the difference made by every effective leader. People’s lives – their performance – is made better because of YOU. Or in spite of you.

Talk at them and it’s in spite of you. Teach them and it’s because of you.

Help them understand. Fully understand. Don’t patronize them. Just do the extra mile to make sure you understand how they feel, acknowledge their feelings…then teach them. Expect greatness from them and they’ll deliver. Together, it’ll change everybody’s world and rock your entire organization. In a good way!

Randy

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Performance Metrics For Leadership - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE Podcast Episode 282

282 Performance Metrics For Leadership

Performance Metrics For Leadership - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE Podcast Episode 282

You want what you want. There are traits and characteristics that matter to you. And there are some other qualities you don’t much care about one way or the other. Every top leader has preferences.

Sometimes it’s personality. It may be a certain communication style. It could even be a specific university credential you find more valuable than another.

Biases. Preferences. Inclinations. Tendencies. I don’t much care what you call them because we’ve all got them. And they transfer up and down the chain of our organization when it comes to our expectations of our leaders, too. We prefer what we prefer and we want what we want. Often without giving it too much thought.

You’d Better Think

courtesy of Flickr user @H. Michael Karshis
courtesy @H. Michael Karshis*

Aretha’s big hit, RESPECT, started with that admonition and it’s wise for every leader to follow it. We’d better stop and think about what we expect and the ways we’re measuring leadership in our organizations.

I intentionally call them “performance metrics” for a reason – they should be based on actual performance instead of simply our personal preferences. The military leaders have an expectation of their leaders. Drill sergeants are expected to produce a specific outcome – soldiers prepared to defend the country. But they’re also expected to produce those results in a specific way, with a certain demeanor and persona. I suspect the branches of the military don’t allow much wiggle room for a drill sergeant tasked with training new recruits much latitude in devising his own program. Strict, regimented protocol is the order of the day, every day. They do what they do because inherently they believe it’s the best approach. History and performance show military what works. They value what they value and who can argue with it?

Now look inside your organization or team. Part of thinking involves figuring out what you most value. The military mostly values compliance and obeying orders, especially in new recruits. If you can’t accept being told what to do, there’s no place for you in the military. By the way, that may be true in many other endeavors, too. The military needs men and women devoted to learning and getting it right 100% of the time. Errors can result in death. Instinctively knowing what to do and when to do it is crucial in their world. The training is designed to bring that about in the men and women who serve. It’s for the welfare of each team and each team member. As a result, the performance of the entire military hinges on it.

What’s most important in your organization?

That’s entirely up to who you are and what you do. And how you want to do it. For example, there’s a new online video streaming social media platform called Blab. You can check out my profile at RandyCantrell.com/blab. The other day they did a live streaming tour of their 25,000 square foot headquarters in San Francisco. This is a start up that’s been live for a matter of months. They have under 20 people working for them. They operate like many tech startup’s. It’s a holocracy kind of set up, with people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. Everybody is working a ton of hours, so the traditional work environment doesn’t work for them. Instead, this small team of people is doing the work of a much larger staff because they’re working almost non-stop, round the clock, but they do it from their offices, from home, from little nooks and sofas around the office, from the park — or anywhere else they happen to be (or want to be). The work is more important to them than having butts in seats at desks in the office.

Blab, like many of their technology counterparts, have a trust in their small team. They trust the team to dive in and do what must be done regardless of what the clock or calendar says. Their top leader said the only important thing to him and to Blab is that people get their work done. The tour is about an hour long. It’s recorded at Blab and you can watch it here.

Other organizations operate very differently. Some want all their employees at their desks promptly by 8am. They view butts in chairs as a performance metric. If somebody isn’t where they’re supposed to be by 8am leaders see it as slothfulness, lethargy or worse. They believe that people need to be at a certain place in order to do the work. Blab doesn’t. I’m not judging the rightness or wrongness of either – it just displays the vast difference between two cultures based on their beliefs. And those beliefs determine what gets measured and how performance gets judged.

We need to start with our own thinking because, as with many things, we can fall into traps thinking we’re judging the right things when we’re really not. The company that judges butts in chairs assumes two basic things: 1) people can only do their work from their desks and 2) people can’t be slothful while at their desk. Sure, we all know both assumptions are faulty. To be fair, I guess that first assumption could be correct if the person’s job is data entry, speed dialing prospects or answering phones in a call center, but most tasks aren’t just restricted to a single desk. And even those who are restricted to a single desk can certainly be abused with lethargy, poor work habits and distractions that cause poor performance. It’s just not as simple as making sure people are where you think they belong.

What’s Most Important To You?

one thingLet’s start here instead of diving headlong into specific behaviors because it’s important for us to think about WHY we do what we do, and why we want what we want. Blab wants exponential growth and user adoption. They want high user engagement. And they’re getting all of those things because they’re out front listening and responding to user feedback. They’re engaging the early adopters of the platform because they know these are the people who will fuel their growth. They also clearly want technical proficiency in the platform. That is, they want Blab to work and well.

There are currently about 316 million active Twitter users monthly, according to Twitter. In order to log onto Blab you need a Twitter account. I don’t know how many people are on Blab currently, but I suspect it’s changing every second. I’m sure it’s well into the millions and yet their team is under 20 people. Blab isn’t the first small team to show us how effective and efficient very few people can be. People speculate (I don’t know for sure how to find out) that the US military SEAL teams consist of 16-man platoons. A small group of highly trained, well equipped, highly disciplined and highly motivated people can do big, big things!

Are sales and acquiring new customers the most important thing to you? How about serving existing customers better, maybe that’s the most important thing to you? Is doing world-class work (it could be anything from managing an entire city government and all the moving parts that entails, or it could building skyscrappers) the most important thing? What matters the most?

This is where people often misstep by saying, “All of it is important.” In essence, they say, “We don’t have ANY priorities.”

Yet, I’ve never seen an organization that didn’t have priorities. Some may not think about it as clearly as they could, but when you press hard enough you find out every team, every organization has A priority. They have one thing that matters more than anything else. The problem is they don’t talk of it often enough. They don’t focus on it often enough. They allow themselves to be distracted with all the other stuff that may be involved in the pursuit of the priority.

I began my career as a hi-fi sales guy because I loved listening to music. My priority was the music though, not the gear. Without the music, I wouldn’t have cared one thing about the gear. As a sales guy I mostly want to connect people with the right gear to enhance their experience with the music they wanted to hear. Not everybody had my taste in music. No problem. I was well versed in what the gear could do and I developed the skill to help a person who loved classical music get the best system his budget would allow. Then, I could do the same thing for the guy who mostly listened to metal. Different set up in all likelihood, but same exact goal and purpose – to give the customer the system that would best suit their listening preferences.

I could have been distracted with the specifics of every piece of gear just for the sake of loving the gear, but the gear had a purpose. To deliver the listening experience most suitable to the customer. What specifics are you getting caught up in that are distracting you from the primary purpose or objective of the work? Think about it. Carefully.

One thing. Narrow it down to one thing.

This needs to be the one thing that everybody on your team knows to be true…so you can’t fake it. Here are some examples, but these are generic for our purposes in this conversation. However, each one has a more specific goal based on the organization.

• Customer acquisition (this is about leading the space by having the most customers)
• World-class design (Apple is an example, focusing their design on the best user experience possible)
• Low cost provider (think Wal-Mart)
• Fastest service (a local plumber who claims 2-hour response time day or night)
• Best selection (Whole Foods takes pride in having a great selection of organic items)
• Remarkable client service (Nordstrom’s has crafted legendary service)

It’s not a mission statement or a statement of philosophies. It’s the over-arching thing you want to get done! It’s what you want to be known for.

You need everybody in your organization to be on board with chasing it as hard as they can. You can’t afford people to lose sight of the priority. Sure, Apple, Blab and other technology companies need crack engineers to make the technology work, but Apple’s commitment to design is world-class because they focus on user experience. That means Apple doesn’t just care about the feature, but they care about how the feature works and feels to the user. Everybody and everything in your organization should be able to point back to the one thing that matters most. The whole team pulls in the direction of that one thing – and that’s what makes your organization unique, remarkable and special. It’s your edge!

How Are We Going To Get It Done?

how
…but how?

There are many paths toward a single thing. Whole Foods isn’t interested in having the biggest selection of just anything. They’re known for organic, hence the name, “Whole Foods.” They pander to a specific shopper willing to pay premium prices for the best organic foods available without driving to a farmer’s market. Convenience, nice, clean, well-organized and well-lit are all part of the Whole Foods’ experience, but those aren’t their ONE thing — those are ways they accomplish their ONE thing. Your organization will need these details in place, too. It’s your answer to the question, “HOW?”

It’s not possible to chase your one thing without caring how it gets done. Lots of teams stumble here as people wonder (often aloud), “Why do they care how we do it? Shouldn’t it be good enough to just get it done?”

It does matter how things are done because they need to be congruent with the ONE thing. Apple engineers could likely incorporate some features customers might want, but until they can do it in a way that delivers superior user experience, Apple isn’t going to incorporate them. World-class design is the ONE thing, but killer user experience and interface are mandatory. You’ve got your own mandatory things, too. It’s important that your entire organization embrace the methodologies that are important to your ONE thing.

Every member of your team needs to be taught why HOW matters. You do that by helping them see how their work contributes to the number one, most important thing. From the top, most highly compensated to the seemingly lowest, menial job on your team – everybody’s work must be seen in light of the biggest priority. Without that, you’ll never be able to duly impress on people why HOW matters.

Again, when you consider Apple, it’s the HOW that makes all the difference. Apple may “think different” but they execute different, too. They don’t do it the way others do it. They produce the most intuitive technology on the planet because their big thing is driven hard by how they accomplish it. Your organization needs proper focus on HOW in order to make the work remarkable. Remarkable work is the goal of every high performing – or would be high performing – organization I’ve ever worked with. And because you’re reading this or listening to this, it must mean you’re interested in growth and improvement. It’s the sign of a top performer, constant learning.

Take something as mundane as budgets. Every organization creates a budget. Some small organizations may just have an Excel spreadsheet consisting of a single sheet. Others can produce a massive document with hundreds of pages and a fully indexed appendix. “Just prepare the budget,” is a bad order for any leader to give. What’s included, how it is included, where does it belong, how much is enough, how much is too much, where to put resources, where to remove or lessen resources — these are important issues that speak to HOW the budget will be crafted. Budgets can be done poorly or they can be done well. HOW determines the outcome. It can’t be a “just get it done” ordeal.

Sometimes I encounter people who oppose a designated HOW approach to leadership and measuring performance. They may cite how McDonald’s has processes and procedures for every little thing, but they have no creativity or innovation. First off, I can’t speak with any authority that McDonald’s doesn’t allow creativity or innovation. Do they allow people to craft burgers any way they’d like? No. It’s regimented. Likewise with all the other things they prepare. They have a precise way of doing things and the demand – much like our military – is that it be done that way each and every time. Delivering predictable, successfully replicated food time after time is what McDonald’s does. They don’t claim to have the best hamburger in the world. They just promise that you’ll get what you’ve come to expect. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Shawnee, Oklahoma or London, England – you’re going to get what you expect because they follow a process (their HOW). When you visit McDonald’s you’re happy about that, too.

That doesn’t mean that McDonald’s isn’t listening to their people who may have suggestions on ways to get better. It doesn’t mean they’re not innovative in finding new items their customers might want. It just means in the context of delivering products to customers, they take no chances. They do what they know works. It’s not so much a lack of innovation or creativity as it is about proper time and place. When I’m in the drive through waiting on my McDonald’s burger and fries, I don’t want somebody trying to trick it up with an innovative idea. I came there with an expectation. I want that expectation met. I don’t go to McDonald’s for a speciality meal. Nobody does.

A common question I’m asked is, “How can we focus on HOW and predictable results and still have innovation?” Easy. You have to separate some things, namely the moments in time when innovation is allowed or fostered and the times that it’s completely inappropriate. Depending on your organization it can be easy or hard.

I had to visit the Apple store a few months back for a technical problem with some hardware. I made an appointment online through their website, then went to the store at the appointed time. I’ve done this before. I know the drill and how it works. When I arrived at the store I gave them my name. They explained that their computer system was down. They asked me the time of my appointment, trusting me to tell them the truth. I did. They made note of it and directed me to a line back toward the Genius Bar. It went just like it would have done had their system been up, except they were having to improvise. They were having to innovate on the fly due to a technical glitch. But I’m sure they huddled or pre-prepared what to do when this sort of thing happened. It was out the norm, but they did what they had to do. It worked because they were all on the same page, executing the same plan. If the guy who greeted me at the door had decided he’d innovate and do things differently, my experience would have been less than stellar. Wrong time to innovate. The time to innovate was whenever they got together to craft an emergency plan on how to handle incoming customers when the computer system goes down.

How is your organization any different? It’s not. There are times to embrace and foster creativity and innovation. For most of us, it’s not during execution — especially execution with customers. Protocol, processes and workflows require creativity and innovation. Make sure you have times and places built in to let the best ideas bubble to the top. After the decision is made, demand faithful execution to the product or service delivered is always spot on.

Judging The Performance

You want what you want. That priority – your ONE thing – and how you get it done is entirely up to you if you’re the top leader. It’s your responsibility to teach it, train it and expect it (which means holding people accountable for it). Whenever I’m serving a client I’m in no position to architect these things. My job is to serve the leader by helping them elevate their own leadership performance and the performance of their team or organization. Sure, my work mostly is done with organizations congruent with my view of leadership, but all these specifics of the work aren’t my responsibility. Yes, sometimes I’m asked – in fact, I’m often asked – to offer my opinion to a top leader, but I would never contradict what top leadership wants. Rather, it’s my role to ensure that top leaders grow in their effectiveness to establish their priorities, set up how they want things done and hold their people properly accountable for getting the work done.

Leaders have to judge the performance of the people on their team. How will you know if they’re getting these things right? Well, it hinges on how they value things – and what they value.

I focus on performance. That’s why that word is part of the title of the podcast. It doesn’t diminish the importance of the HOW, but it does put the emphasis where I think it belongs – the quality of the work done. So much of my work is concentrated on what the world calls “soft skills.” People skills. They matter because there are people capable of produced high quality work, but they can’t get along with others. Just recently a team leader told me about being short a person because he parted with a high achiever. Fully expecting to hear about how it was putting him behind schedule or some other constraint brought about the loss of a valued team member…instead he told me how much more his short-handed team was accomplishing. When I asked how that worked, he went on to tell me how disruptive the high achiever was. Turns out this person did good, even great work, on his own, but he brought down the productivity of everybody who had to interact with him. He was suppressive, even oppressive to the rest of the team. Now, with him gone, the rest of the team was happier and vastly more productive. So how would YOU judge that high achiever? Based solely on his own performance or based on his overall impact on the team’s performance? I agree with his leader.

Stepping over dollars for dimes is common place in many organization, especially those who can’t seem to focus on their ONE thing. But the rest of us can be prone to do it, too. Something can irk us that may have little or nothing to do with performance. We like what we like. We believe what we believe. Maybe it’s based on evidence. Maybe not. Go back and listen to the last episode about evidence-based leadership (#281). Let me encourage you to lose whatever biases or world views you’ve got that aren’t based in evidence. I do that because I know it can destroy your performance measurements. You can’t establish good metrics for performance if they hinge mostly on what you like or dislike. Those can swing wildly like a person’s mood. And they ruin people who are trying desperately to figure out how to please you, and do good work.

But be careful about measurements that don’t take into account the things that really matter to you. For example, our high achiever who destroyed the productivity of the entire team could have passed an annual review with flying colors. He could have been scored using a dashboard that viewed mostly what he got done and be seen as an A+ player. But such a scorecard wouldn’t have been accurate. It wouldn’t have told the entire story. So craft your dashboards with care. Make sure you weight the actions and activities that properly depict what you want done, how you want it done and when you want it done! See the big picture and all the details, too.

Some Final Tips

  1. Carefully craft your number one priority – your ONE big deal. What do you most want to accomplish?
  2. Figure out HOW you want to get it done. Embrace creativity and innovation to come up with the most efficient, compelling way to get the work done.
  3. Don’t ignore onboarding new team members, and don’t neglect to train and indoctrinate the current staff. They need to fully embrace the one big priority and how you’re going to get it done. They also have to be trained to understand your expectations.
  4. Set and expect high performance standards. Create dashboards or scorecards that give you the most accurate (evidence) picture of how well people are performing. Make sure you’re measuring the things that will accomplish what you want, when you want and how you want.
  5. Coach it up. When people fail, make sure they really understand how to deliver the results you want. If they don’t, retrain them. If they do, don’t tolerate any lack of willingness to do what you want done (that includes doing it how you want it done). Compliance, once the system is built, is a must.
  6. Foster input and feedback, but don’t ignore the established workflows. And don’t allow deviations from the agreed upon processes unless that deviation is due to extraordinary circumstances AND it takes the organization forward with dazzling customer experiences (i.e. Apple’s behavior when their system is down in the store).
  7. Reward all the best performers. Focus on the people doing the very best work. Give them what they need to do even better.
  8. Correct poor performers. Coach them, train them and correct them. Don’t live with them if their status quo isn’t cutting it. You can’t soar by leading to the lowest common denominator. You win with star players!
  9. Celebrate victories. Reward the performance you most want to achieve. You can train dogs with treats, not with beatings.

Your performance metrics are the ones that best serve YOU and your organization. Just make sure they are serving you and not distracting you from the primary objectives you’ve established. Measure the stuff that really matters. Don’t sweat the stuff that has no bearing on the objectives you’ve established on your organization, keeping in mind that “no bearing” means stuff that doesn’t negatively impact your work, your culture or your processes.

Randy

* Photo courtesy Flicker users H. Michael Karshis

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282 Performance Metrics For Leadership Read More »

Evidence-Based Leadership: The Only Fair Way To Lead - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE Podcast Episode 281

281 Evidence-Based Leadership: The Only Fair Way To Lead

Evidence-Based Leadership: The Only Fair Way To Lead - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE Podcast Episode 280
A 2006 book by two of my favorite business authors

I sub-titled today’s show, “The Only Fair Way To Lead” because it’s fair for YOU, the leader and for your team, too. I want you to be fair to yourself. That’s important as you work to be fair to your team. Any leader who won’t face their own reality will find it tough to face the reality of those they hope to lead and serve. Everybody is made better by dealing with how things really are.

I’m pained when I see a leader struggle with their own quality of professional life issues that could be helped if they’d just open themselves up to the possibilities of leadership growth. Unfortunately, too many leaders have a worldview that is destructive and formed in cement. Driven by paranoia, fear and insecurity, many of us can’t seem to get out of our own way to consider a better way. We get stuck in some bad habits that we think may be serving us, but really — they’re killing us and making our lives (and those we hope to serve) miserable. I have never wanted such a life for anybody, especially anybody I’m privileged to call “client.”

I want YOU to soar as a leader. I want your team to thrive under your leadership. I want you to feel wonderful about the service you provide to your team. Joy. That’s what I want for you. The joy of serving others. The joy of personal and professional growth. The joy of seeing your people grow under your watchful care and concern.

First a small bit of history. I’m a fan of scholar/authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton. By the time their book was published (2006), Hard Facts: Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense (Profiting From Evidence-Based Management) – I had well over 2 decades of experience in working hard to make sure I was seeing and hearing things correctly. Based on evidence.

Jumping To Conclusions

I first learned it without knowing what to call it. For me, it was just seeing reality instead of practicing knee-jerk leadership. Early in my career I worked for a guy who practiced anything but evidence-based leadership. His behavior drove employees crazy, but over time I noticed it mostly drove a particular kind of employee crazy. The top performers.

The owner was one of the first people I ever worked for. I’d later learn – through experience – that he was among a large group of business owners and leaders who practice management without evidence. He would make purchasing decisions on how he felt about things rather than what was actually selling. He would make determinations about people based on how well he liked them rather than on how well they were performing. Everything seemed to be more feeling-based or emotion-based than evidence-based. And it drove us nuts. Well, as I said, it drove those of us who were performing at high levels nuts.

I saw it happen over and over. People would be highly regarded by the owner in spite of compelling evidence against them. Others would be lesser regarded in spite of evidence to the contrary. Life in business taught me it was a common malady. Partly because it’s hard to resist. Most of us get first impressions based on appearances, demeanor, speech and whatever else we observe. Those observations aren’t necessarily evidence though. Even so, we draw conclusions. We peg people. Not always correctly.

I was once introduced to two people. One was a manager. One was not. It was a very brief introduction made in passing. A week or so passed and I found myself in a business meeting involving both of these people. The meeting is clipping along when suddenly I’m smacked with my own idiocy. Turns out the person I thought was the manager wasn’t. In that brief introduction I’d been given of two people I not only got their names mixed up, but I also mixed up their roles. For more than half an hour during this meeting I’m looking at them based on my wrong conclusion. Thankfully, I sat passively, not addressing either of them, or discussing anything that would give away my stupidity. But I remember sitting there thinking, “Wait a minute. He’s not the manager?” I had it wrong. Getting it right changed everything. That’s the point. Getting it wrong versus getting it right changes everything!

Jumping to a conclusion implies a quickness that doesn’t always serve us well. We have to reach conclusions. That’s not necessarily a bad thing provided we’ve got some evidence from which to draw our conclusion. It’s the jumping that can kill us. We sometimes fail to hear properly or see properly. Then there’s that whole discernment problem – sometimes we just don’t see things clearly, or hear them clearly. How else do you explain multiple witnesses giving completely contradictory accounts of the same event? It’s like they saw or heard completely different events. Nope, they just each had their own head trash and perceptions (or lack of). Sadly, it’s not a case of somebody being right and somebody being wrong. When it comes to evidence-based leadership, sometimes we all just flat get it wrong!

Why do we do what we do? Why do we think what we think? What’s the evidence upon which we based our assumptions or conclusions?

Evidence Isn’t Truth, But Evidence Leads To Truth

There’s a difference between evidence and truth. Hopefully, evidence leads us to truth. But like any data, evidence is subject to interpretation. The important thing is to be open enough to see and hear the evidence clearly so you can follow it to where it leads you.

Great leaders need to be led by the evidence. And I’m speaking as a very intuitive person. I’m an INFJ (Meyer-Briggs assessment). I’m very intuitive. I have strong empathy. Maybe that’s why I’ve learned how important evidence is in my own leadership. It may also explain why evidence-based leadership is so urgent for me personally. Given my levels of intuition, I want to make sure I’m getting it as right as possible. I’m always looking for confirmation or denial that my intuition is valid. Getting it right is far more important than feeling or believing it’s right. I want proof.

When I began my career computers were no where to be found inside small businesses or large ones, except maybe the super-large ones. Cash registers and tabulating machines (mechanical adding machines) were the extent of our high tech world in the mid to late 1970’s. Sort through data was laborious. Bean counters were so named because those stodgy personalities disposed to hole up in a room with only their colored pencils and journals wanted to dive deeply into the numbers and let the rest of us mortals know which end was up. Or if both ends were down. Data was hard to come by. Gut feel was highly regarded, especially if the gut had a winning record.

But things change. Data began to be easier to collect. Pretty soon we had bigger issues than no data or a lack of data. We were over-run with data. An avalanche of data come sweeping our way daily, weekly and monthly. Pretty soon we had it pouring over the falls hourly. Now, it’s real-time shot to our headquarters from every remote location of our companies worldwide. We’re in a zero latency data environment today. It’s terrific and challenging at the same time.

While authors Pfeffer and Sutton focus on evidence-based management, I’m concentrating on evidence-based leadership. We manage work. We lead people. That’s the distinction I make.

The authors begin the book talking about corporate acquisitions and how the majority of them fail. There are reasons (evidence) why this is so. They cite the success of Cisco to incorporate new acquisitions and teams into their culture with far greater success because the Cisco leaders use evidence. Unlike many businesses, Cisco executives don’t rely on hope or fear or anything else. They go with where the evidence leads them and it works.

The authors write…

If doctors practiced medicine the way many companies practice management, there would be far more sick and dead patients, and many more doctors would be in jail.”

People make decisions. They dream up new ideas. They fix problems, and often create them. They get work done, or fail to. In short, people have the power to think. That’s the trump card, provided people are thinking correctly. That’s where evidence-based leader makes the impact.

Have you ever heard a successful person interviewed and the interviewer, hoping to draw out some secret strategy about why the person made a particular decision gets an answer they never saw coming? Maybe it’s a rock star or some other performer who made it big. Hoping for some insight the interviewer asks, “What was the strategy to go to Nashville?” And the artist might say something like, “We weren’t headed to Nashville. We set out for L.A., but we ran out of money and our drummer had a brother in Nashville where we knew we could crash until we earned some more money.”

Nothing terribly strategic about that. They ran out of money and needed a place to crash. Nashville was a lot closer than L.A. Hello, Nashville!

But we’re trying to replicate their success and dissect their strategy. We’re examining their story and drawing some conclusions. Until we find out, we’re wrong. They were just on the road running out of money in need of a place to crash for a few days, or weeks. So it goes with how we sometimes operate our organizations. We give meaning to things that have no meaning and we overlook other things that seem to have no meaning — but may mean everything!

A Copy-Cat World

More than ever before, it’s a copy-cat world. Chinese manufacturing has enabled the resourceful person to “knock off” just about anything. I’m not saying it’s legal. I’m only saying it’s possible and it’s happening every minute of every day. From hand bags and fashion products to high tech toys, somebody has a factory who can crank them out for you. Why do the engineering when all you need to do is buy one, tear it apart and reverse engineer it? Welcome to the world where generic is benefit.

All that R&D expense, saved. All those man hours of engineering, saved. All that time vetting the proper components needed to make it, saved. Not to mention all that wasted time being creative. We’ve migrated away from the notion that reinventing the wheel isn’t just unnecessary, but’s stupid. In fact, don’t even improve the wheel or put your own design on it. Just copy it outright. That way you only copy what works, what’s selling. You’re never stuck with a dog because you don’t copy dogs.

What was once bench-marking is now copying. We just gave it a fancy name, bench marking.

Judging books and people by their cover is standard fare today. That’s why bloggers and podcasters – at the least the ones who clammer for more readers and listeners – spend extraordinary amounts of time writing headlines and show titles. I should follow the evidence and do a better job of this myself. I do care about attracting more listeners, but I clearly have cared enough. Click bait is the practice of luring web surfers to click on a link by use of crafty copywriting, or other tactics. Sometimes we get what we thought we’d get. Much of the time we’re fooled. Again.

The authors point out how copy cat like we are, even in police work. At the time of their writing only 4 out of over 19,000 legal jurisdictions implemented an evidence-based practice of using sequential lineups instead of the commonly practiced, six-pack approach where witnesses are shown 6 people at a time in a line up. About 75% of all the convictions overturned by contrary DNA evidence resulted from eye witness testimony given by people who viewed a lineup. But there’s comfort in copying. At least if we’re wrong, so are most of the other people. Misery and misinformation love company.

Thankfully, you’ll likely find law enforcement agencies now practice sequential identification where a witness looks at one person at a time. Collective wisdom finally caught up with the evidence. It took a long time, but better late than never. Sometimes evidence takes awhile to be seen as valid, especially when everybody is going in the same direction – even if it’s against the evidence.

Years ago corporate America would purchase IT services and products from IBM because it was always the safest choice. Executives wouldn’t be reprimanded for going with IBM. It was the “no risk” option even if other suppliers might have proven to be better suited. So it goes sometimes with actions that go contrary to the evidence.

Let’s Simplify Things

Peter Drucker was asked why managers fall for bad advice and sometimes fail to use sound evidence.

Thinking is very hard work. And management fashions are a wonderful substitute for thinking.”

Blind spots, biases, prejudices, assumptions, perceptions, perspectives and a host of other things cloud our view and impair our hearing. We often hear what we want and see what we want. Then, we cram in data to make it fit. Square peg or not, sometimes we just don’t care because we’ve got a round hole that needs to be filled. Grab a bigger hammer. Make it fit.

It’s hard work to think. Harder still to see the evidence clearly. Still harder to follow the evidence until we get closer to the truth. If it’s your murder being investigated, you want a relentless blood hound of a homicide detective leading the way. Not some gloss it over and draw a quick conclusion kind of a cop. Chase the evidence and find the truth. At least get as close as humanly possible.

Leaders owe their people that commitment. Maybe you’re not solving a crime, but you are an investigator. You’re searching for the most accurate evidence you can find. Decisions hinge on it. Choices are made based on it. Careers are elevated, or knocked down because of it. And if not evidence, then what? Your gut feel? Intuition? The rumor mill? What others claim to have been told by somebody?

So many things in life don’t work, but still we seem to put in the work. Kids drop out of school and we think truancy rules work. They don’t. We often fix problems by creating new ones. All for a lack of thoughtful consideration in gathering evidence and following it toward the truth. A young woman pipes up in a meeting, saying something we deem a tad inappropriate and we castigate her forever more as uncouth and unprofessional. Maybe she just didn’t properly read the situation one time. Maybe nobody else in the room saw it like we did. What appears bad at first glance may be completely innocent upon further examination. But that would take too much time and effort. Easier to jump the conclusion that first hits us. And peg her forever more as somebody unworthy of our executive team. She may be the brightest bulb in the room, but not the most socially savvy. I don’t know. I need more evidence.

Some Tips To Help You

It’s not a comprehensive list, but it’ll get you started. I encourage you to think of your own steps. Ponder what actions you can take to improve your own evidence-based leadership.

One, know yourself

I know I’m an INFJ. I also know I’m high on empathy. There are many things I know about myself thanks to years to living with myself. And being critical with myself. But also thanks to the input of others. When in doubt, ask others how they see you. It may not mean they’re correct, but if everybody tells you the same thing, you’d be foolish to discount it.

Every leader – and investigator – has tendencies and views that have to be taken into account. Women see things differently than men. As a result, our interaction with others might be curved toward our view. Knowing that and acknowledging that helps us gather and vet evidence.

AlwaysAs a coach and consultant I have a mandate that I live by: do no harm. Yes, I stole it from the medical profession because it fits! The last thing I want to do is harm somebody, or hurt their career. That doesn’t mean I make sure to tell people what they most want to hear, or that I pander to clients who have behaviors that are contrary to accelerating their careers. No, I’ll speak the truth that I’ve witnessed, but I’m committed to making sure I’ve got it right. When I get it wrong – and yes, it happens – I want to be quick to own it and make it right. It’s how I choose to live. These aren’t difficult concepts or practices for me. I embrace them because they fit what I value most.

As a leader the do no harm mandate is a wise choice. Knowing yourself and controlling yourself gives you the best opportunity to avoid doing harm to others, and yourself. There’ve been time that I got it wrong and made it right, but harm was still done. Regrettable, but until I can be perfect, it’s life. I’ve wronged people. People have wronged me. When people own their actions I can pretty easily forgive. That’s what I hope happens when I own my own errors.

So part of knowing yourself is knowing where you’d like to err. Do you want to err in jumping to the wrong conclusion where harm might happen, or in jumping to the wrong conclusion where grace might be extended. An employee who neglects to perform a specified task may be guilty of neglect. Or they may have a valid excuse or reason. Jump to the conclusion that they’re negligent and climb all over them. Feel better? What if you discovered they were enduring some serious family challenge? Does that alter your view? It might. By foregoing the conclusion jump you give not only the employee, but yourself the opportunity to get it right – or get it MORE right. By knowing yourself you can decide which approach you’ll take. You know which one I’m encouraging you to take!

Two, know your team members.

There are many reasons to love small teams. Chief among them is the ability to really know and understand people. Every person.

Anonymity doesn’t serve leaders well. Being anonymous or having anonymous team members isn’t helpful for any leadership. You need to know the people you’re leading. They need to know you, too.

Be real. Stay real. Don’t pretend. Sure, you’ve got multiple personas, but leave the masks in the closet for Halloween. Personas are for situations. Like clothing. Sometimes I wear a suit. Other times I wear jeans. The circumstances dictate the choice. Whether I’m wearing a suit or jeans, it’s still me though. The presentation or persona is the only thing that changes. Otherwise, I’d be flexing in and out of personality styles, vocabulary choices and people would be looking to have me committed to a mental health facility.

The word is congruency. Every leader must be congruent. Your people need to be able to accurately predict your behavior. The more predictable you can be, the better. Don’t undervalue this. Or think it’s better to “keep ’em guessing.” It’s not better.

Your team members want to know where they fit and that they matter. Do you want them to feel uneasy when they drive into work each day? Or would you rather they walk into the office confident that they matter? You keep that uneasy team member and I’ll take the confident one every time. My confident team member will kick the butt of your always-on-edge worker every single time!

Parents know their kids. Kids know their parents. The more the better. Good parents have instilled training into their kids so much so that their kids know what mom and dad want – even if mom and dad haven’t addressed this specific thing facing the child right now. Was it that way when you were growing up? Did your folks have to train you in every possible specific thing or did you know your parents well enough to understand what they would disapprove of and what they would think was okay?

Leadership in your organization works the same way. Predictability doesn’t mean your stagnant lacking innovation or creativity. Nor does it mean you’re not devoted to changes leading toward improvement. It means your team knows what matters most to you. They’ll make the decisions they think will please you. If they do that and suffer for it, they’ll quickly begin to wonder what you want. That’s why you should put being congruent on a front burner of your leadership. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Be consistent. Don’t say one thing and do something else. The team will be confused and congruency will slip. Pretty soon people will dread coming to work because they just can’t predict how you’re going to react or behave.

Three, attract the facts.

Attracting the facts is important work for the leader. Some leaders are surrounded by deaf mutes because only deaf mutes survive. Then they wonder why nobody will tell them anything.

It’s one thing to go gather facts. Anybody with sufficient resolve can do that. It just takes work. Attracting facts is a completely different skillset that you must develop. If you’ve become proficient at the first two steps, then this step is much easier. Fail at either of those and I don’t give you a fighting chance at making this one happen.

As a leader you want others to willingly share facts with you. You want them to be proactive to share facts. The goal is to have a team of people who are forthcoming. I’ll give you 2 simple, but powerful tips to accomplish this. One, be forthcoming with them. You can’t expect people to be forthcoming with you if you won’t be with them. And you’ve got to start the ball rolling. Be forthcoming without any expectation or conditions from them. Two, don’t shoot the messenger. Don’t be emotionally charged when people bring you facts that disappoint you. Be calm, not reactive. The more reactive you are, the more you’re negating your ability to attract facts.

Thoughtful. That’s what people want in leadership. Sure, considerate, too – but thoughtful and considerate aren’t the same thing. Thoughtful means you consider things. It implies you’re careful in your thinking. You don’t jump to conclusions. You take the time to get it right. Everybody will respect that, even if they don’t understand it. You’re liable to have some knee-jerk employees who will encourage you to join hands and jump to the conclusions they’ve already reached. Avoid the temptation. You have to be better. Hold to a higher standard. Show them the way toward evidence-based leadership by giving people a culture where presenting the facts is highly prized.

Attracting facts isn’t the same as attracting complaints. Or rumors. An employee approaches you to tell you something they’ve heard. Thinking they’re being dutiful they’re anxious to tell you about an exchange they just had over lunch. It seems their lunch partner told the story of a manager who may be working employees without paying them the required overtime. Rather than listen passively you begin to ask hard questions like, “How does this person know this?” You follow that up with more specific questions, including searching answers for who talked to whom. You want to attract facts, not rumors. This will accomplish two important things: one, it signals that you’re interested in facts and two, it signifies that you’re not going to be a sounding board for rumors. People need to have their facts when they present them. If they don’t, you don’t want to attract nonsense.

Sadly, too many leaders can hear something and deem it fact or credible evidence. Somebody told somebody something and a leader swallows it hook, line and sinker. That’s not evidence-based leadership. That’s foolishness. “Did you hear them say that?” asks the leader to a person coming to them with “facts.” The fact revealer says, “Well, no. But Bob said Tom told him, and Tom heard it firsthand.” Well, isn’t this peachy. Somebody fetch Tom and let’s see if we can figure out the facts.

Rumor-based leadership is not nearly as effective or productive as evidence-based leadership. Seek facts. Attract facts.

Four, accurately discern the facts.

Sounds easier than it really is. You have to take the time to ask questions. You’ve got to pause and ask deeper questions.

It starts in your head by questioning your questions. Is there a better question to ask, one that will take you closer to the truth? Always remember that truth is the quest. You want to see things as they really are. Your team deserves that from you. Your career and leadership do, too.

Dig like a detective. Keep digging. If you need corroboration, go get it. President Ronald Reagan gave you the formula for evidence-based leadership.

Trust, but verify!

Don’t lead by paranoia. Don’t be cynical and untrusting. Just be guarded about forming conclusions. Base them on facts and evidence.

Ask yourself:

• What do I know to be true?
• Do I know for a fact what really happened?
• Do I know for a fact what was really said and meant?
• Who are my sources and how credible are they?
• Do I have evidence to prove the motive behind this?
• Where’s the proof?

Keep adding to that list. Think. Craft your own questions. Above all, stay the course.

Five, don’t give in to shortcutting it.

Sometimes you’ll be pressed for time and tempted to shortcut it. Just this one time you’ll knee-jerk it and jump to a conclusion. That’s when you’re going to get it wrong and undermine all the discipline and hard work you’ve put into being an evidence-based leader.

You want your team to do great work all the time. No matter what. Don’t show them how willing you are to shortcut your own work because that’ll show them it’s okay for them to do it, too – every now and again. No, it’s not okay. It’s never a good thing to intentionally – due to your own laziness and neglect – to get it wrong. Sins of commission are better than sins of omission. Be caught doing the wrong thing because you were trying to get it right. Don’t be caught doing nothing because you were lazy or afraid of getting it wrong.

This includes avoiding playing favorites. The best and brightest often get it wrong. Just because you’ve got some team members who have proven reliable every other time doesn’t mean you should accept conjecture from them. Keep holding them to the same high standards you do everybody else. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost trust in them. It just means you’ve got a process that is important to your leadership and you’re unwilling to compromise it. Make it a non-negotiable standard for your leadership.

Curiosity And Vulnerability

Let me wind things down with a bit of focus about 2 vital ingredients to your leadership effectiveness: curiosity and vulnerability.

Leaders, especially senior leaders, can be prone to arrogance and know-it-all syndrome. That whole smartest-guy-in-the-room thing can hit any of us. We have to be on guard against it.

Leaders don’t have super-powers. You’re not as good as you think you are. It’s likely you’re not as bad as you sometimes feel you are either. Accept the truth (and evidence) that you’re blessed with an opportunity at this moment in time. For this moment in time you’re the leader. You’re the steward in charge of the organization, or the department or the team. Responsibilities are a blessing and a burden. Bear them with sobriety and clear thinking. Own them for the time you’ve got them.

Your power is a gift to share with your team to help them do their work better. It’s not a betrothal of superiority. You’re not better than anybody else, or necessarily smarter. You simply have a role and responsibility that has a wider and broader reach than others. A bigger platform gives you authority to influence the direction and work of others. Use it wisely.

Keep learning. Curiosity drives learning. Stop being curious and you’re done! The smartest guys in the room are only interested in showing off, not learning. Avoid being that guy, or gal. View the other person – whomever they are – as knowing something you don’t. Find out what it is?

You know what you know. Growth comes in learning what you don’t know.

Vulnerability is accepting failure. Maybe better yet, it’s being open to failure. Your own.

You must be willing to be wrong. Then, you must be willing to make it right. I regularly ask leaders a question about their leader: “Have they ever apologized to you?”

Simple enough question. You’d think everybody has heard their leader apologize to them for something, unless they’ve only worked for them a brief amount of time. Evidence – the answers I get to that question – has shown me that far too many leaders have never apologized to their team for anything. When I press and ask, “Why do you think that is?” the most common response I get is — “I don’t think they want to appear weak.” Being human isn’t weak. It’s real. Everything else is dishonest.

That’s vulnerability – being honest about yourself. Stop worrying about people thinking you’re all that and more. In fact, I’d encourage you to not fret much about your image with your team. Instead, worry about how well you’re serving them and that image will be everything you wanted and more! And when you’re devoted to leading with evidence, you’re going to start getting it right more often than not. That alone may shoot you and your reputation up into the stratosphere of extraordinary leadership and higher human performance.

Avoid hoarding knowledge, information and expertise. That’s vulnerability. Be confident enough to share what you’ve learned. Pass it on. You’ve spent years and endured many scars to get where you are. Help others avoid the potholes that have nearly broken the ankles on your career and work. These are your people. Their success is your success. Show them the way. Lead.

A Final Word About Leadership Growing Pains (And Why They’re Exactly What You Want)

Any discussion about evidence-based leadership must include some consideration about personal, individual growth of the leader who dares to embrace it. Organizations change. They mature. Personnel changes. Chemistry does, too. If leadership remains in place for a prolonged period of time, they also have the opportunity for growth and maturity, alongside the entire organization. Here in Dallas the Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones hired Jason Garrett to be the head coach, first as interim in late 2010. By January of the next year, 2011, he was named head coach where he remains today. It’s his first head coaching job in the NFL. Jerry Jones has kept him in place. As a result, Garrett has grown. He’s learned. It’s doubtful he’s working exactly the same today as he did 4 years ago. Not all that growth has been comfortable or easy, but it’s clearly been profitable.

So it can go with your leadership and your organization. You can and should learn. You want your team to grow and improve so it’s only fitting that you demand the same of yourself. I’ve seen it happen often. Especially leaders willing to embrace change. Leaders who are vulnerable enough to adapt and grow will experience some tension and stress. Growing pains. That’s exactly what you’re after. You want this pain because it means you’re finding new levels in your own leadership performance.

Don’t take a bow just yet. This is a tough time that you’re going to have muscle through because it’s going to weigh you down and kick your butt if you’re not careful. You’ll be tempted to avoid the pain by reverting back to how things used to be, back when you were totally comfortable. The uneasiness can devastate some leaders. Some even get physically sick. Facing the realities of these changes – especially if you’re going to fully embrace evidence-based leadership – can seem a daunting task. You’ll question whether it’s going to be worth it. The answer is, YES. Keep moving. Push past this pain. It’s a sign that you’re putting in good work.

Leaders brave enough to keep going find a path to organizational excellence they wouldn’t have otherwise found. Here’s what happens. As they’ve been elevating the performance of their team they’ve been urging their top performers to reach new heights. Along the way, they’ve likely seen the gap between their bottom performers and top performers close. They’ve lost some poor performers along the way because they just couldn’t keep up. Now, it’s a different organization that it was years earlier. The team has grown and you’ve grown with them. It’s time to embrace the ultimate way to lead, evidence-based leadership.

You come to grips with the past and sometimes want to kick yourself for failing to see this earlier. But these often happen at an appropriate time, a time when you’re open to see them. A time to accept them and a time when you’re most ready to implement them. Now is your time!

Your team will experience some bewilderment. Don’t sweat it. Go with it. Understand that it’s just part of the necessary process. Keep doing what you must do to practice evidence-based leadership and management. It won’t take too long until your team realizes that this is just the new YOU. It’s now how you roll. They’ll adjust. Then they’ll begin to mirror it in their own leadership and work. The results will amaze you when you see people following your lead, performing at levels they didn’t even think possible.

Fun. That’ll happen. Unless you’re an ogre it can’t be stopped because high performers doing great work have fun. Success and winning make it so. When you’re in the growing pain phase look past that and envision this fun place because that’s where you’re headed.

Randy

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Overestimating Management, Underestimating Leadership (Time To Take A Quantum Leap) - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE

280 Overestimating Management, Underestimating Leadership (Time To Take A Quantum Leap)

Overestimating Management, Underestimating Leadership (Time To Take A Quantum Leap) - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE

Quantum Leap was a TV series in the late 80’s and early 90’s staring Scott Bakula who is now the star on NCIS: New Orleans. I didn’t watch it, but I know people who acknowledge that it was their introduction to the phrase, “quantum leap.” My earliest recollection of the idea came when a business owner I was working for wanted to see what I thought was a small increase in sales for a particular month. I did some quick math in my head and realized the goal could be met with just an extra sale or two from each member of the sales team. No big deal. I was a teenager.

Early in my sales career I learned how deceptive it could be to calculate an increase based on an “if we only sell a few more of this and a few more of that” strategy. But that’s exactly how some companies target quantum leap sales growth. Sales is just one area of growth – likely the most important area for businesses. But it’s something different when you’re running a city government or some other organization whose work isn’t based on revenue or profit generation. It’s about getting things done efficiently and effectively. It’s about winning friends and positively influencing along the way, too. Those can be much harder to measure.

Ask the sales manager with a product list about elevating sales. It’s easy to grab an account list and ask the troops to increase the sale of each SKU just a few units per month. Sounds reasonable. In fact, it can sound ridiculously reasonable. I mean, if a company is buying 10 of one SKU a month, how hard can it be to sell them 12 instead of 10. Come on! We just need them to sell 2 more. That’s nothing.

Now, do that across the board with a list of 36 SKU’s and suddenly you may have taken a client from a $1 million a year level to $2 million. How did THAT happen? Man, alive. We only increased each SKU by 1 or 2 units. But those dollars add up. As reasonable as it seems, it’s completely unreasonable because your 36 SKU’s aren’t the only SKU’s sold by your client. They may or may not have the capacity for increasing the unit sales of your products. Maybe you’ve got a competitor who is selling better among some (or many) of those SKU’s. There’s more to it than merely asking a client to buy a few more of them, and a few more of that.

Incremental increases in purchases by unit can result in quantum leap increases in dollars. It’d be great if our clients would just comply with our desires. Unfortunately, clients have their own needs and constraints. They’re not coming to work each day to make our dreams come true. They’re busy chasing dreams of their own.

Some organizations overestimate managing all the moving parts. They spend an extraordinary amount of effort and time on tracking the measurables they think matter the most. I’m a big fan of data. The more, the better. Provided it’s accurate and provided the conclusions drawn are true. But asking a sales team to sell just a few more of each SKU is not only naive, it’s unreasonable. It shows a lack of leadership.

We manage work and processes. We lead people.

People get things done. Processes provide the vehicle to help people get things done. But a process sans the people isn’t productive. Even in robotics and manufacturing, people are the brains behind the process performed by the robots.

Leadership addresses the why and how of it all. Why are we going to do whatever it is we’re planning? How are we going to do it?

The fact that McDonald’s crafted a process to deliver fast food in a predictable, reliable way time after time was leadership. Leadership is also part of training people to follow that process religiously so the delivery is consistent all the time. Management ensures that the process remains intact. If the french fry machine is broken, the process breaks down. Management has to kick in to fix that problem. If the process isn’t broken, but an employee is failing to follow the process, leadership has to kick in to fix that problem.

The People Side Of Things

I’ve seen sales manager task their team with selling more. Do better. We need to increase sales 10% this month. We’re missing our projections. All the usual stuff of hard charging sales managers!

No examination of the sales process. No leadership in answering the big questions of why and how. Just the admonition to do more. Do better!

In my work to help leaders and executives become more productive I’m unable to detach people from the process. I’ve experienced more than my share of economic downturns, including the oil embargo of the 1970’s and the recent sub-prime mortgage debacle. When times turn hard, it’s common for organizations to look at cutting payroll. People are often the first thing to go when the going gets hard. For good reason. People are expensive. Especially in a day when benefits comprise 30.5% of total wages (US Dept of Labor numbers). That means if you shave 70 cents in payroll, you basically automatically shave another 30 cents in expenses for benefits. And if you don’t have to look people in the eye, it’s easy. What’s hard is generating another buck! Harder still, dropping another dollar to the bottom line profits! Even harder is finding ways to save money in processes, but the great companies learn how. See Southwest Airlines who for years have hedged their bets with fuel costs savings. It’s that whole putting things on trial for their life that I talked about in episode 266.

The people side of enterprise is commonly referred to as “soft skills,” but I think it’s anything but. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard because it’s tough to measure. Harder still for some to be objective. And it’s personal. It’s not some inanimate thing like a procedure or a process. You can sell an asset – like a truck or a building or equipment. Easy. You can lower inventory by not spending as much (but you may risk lowering sales, too). But people? It’s anything but easy or soft. But people can be among the most profitable resources available to you. Because people make decisions, have ideas and solve problems. They make THE difference.

That’s why I emphasize leadership without minimizing management. Both are important, but people are the ones who dream up, create and implement the ideas and processes. And when things break – as they are wont to do in every organization – it’s people who fix it. Sometimes the “it” they fix is themselves and their own performances. I know I promised an episode on evidence-based leadership with this episode, but frequent discussions about leadership in recent weeks have compelled me to postpone it only so I could set the stage with how importantly I view people. It’s a critical piece of the puzzle when we’re sitting down at the kitchen table to assemble the 100,000 piece jigsaw puzzle that is LEADERSHIP.

Data cravers want to dissect numbers and measurable metrics. Don’t misunderstand. I love the measurables, but I’m suspect of those who claim, “The numbers don’t lie.” People don’t always interpret the numbers or data correctly. Conclusions aren’t always accurate. Watch any NFL game and you’ll see numerous instances of replay that are still subject to rule interpretations. The quality of the people – the officials reviewing the replay – make all the difference.

I suspect the same is so in your organization. The best performers increase knowledge and wisdom. Their experiences serve to make the organization better, provided they’re committed to learning. Always learning. That’s the key to improvement.

What can we do to be better?

How can our organization improve?

The answers aren’t easy, or simple. But they’re doable.

Every product, process and workflow can be improved. Sometimes things just get too complicated and we overthink it. Have you ever looked at something your organization is doing and thought, “That’s just more sophisticated than it needs to be?” I’m guessing we all have. Sometimes smart people just worry too much about looking smart. Effective and efficient are frequently just plain simple.

About 10 years ago I purchased a Dyson vacuum cleaner for my wife. Yeah, I’m that kind of a husband. A real romantic!

Well, I bought into the marketing that was (and still is) Dyson. I didn’t do much shopping. They looked cool. The marketing sold me on the technology. So I bought one. No complaints.

The thing had more contraptions and attachments than the NASA space shuttle. It was magnificent. She was happy. It’s served us well for a decade now. But recently it started giving us some problems. Suction wasn’t good. Multiple little issues nagged us. So I set about to find her a new one. Unlike before, I decided this time I’d rely on some expert opinions. I visited with cleaning professionals. I visited websites filled with reviews. I looked at dozens of different models. In the end, those cleaning professionals – the people who vacuum for a living – persuaded me to take a look at Oreck.

The odd thing is I didn’t give Oreck a second glance a decade ago because of what I perceived was hype. Talk about a contradiction. I bought Dyson purely because of marketing, but I avoided Oreck because of perceived hype. And I’m a logical, smart guy. Proof that any of us can be goofed up in our quest to make an evidence-based decision.

How could the Oreck be as good, or better, than a Dyson. The Oreck costs half as much. It’s got no attachments. It’s so old-school. Besides, you have to replace the bag and it’s got a belt drive. Isn’t baglesss and no belt a better way to go? No, said the professionals I talked with. No, said the vacuum repair shops.

The Oreck is basic. Simple. Straight-forward. The beater bar spins at 4000 to 6500 RPM, driving by a belt. The distance between the beater bar and the bag is mere inches. It’s a straight shot. The thing is minimal. It weighs 8 pounds. The Dyson feels like you’re pushing a car once you’ve pushed the Oreck. Brand new, the Dyson never cleaned the floors half as well as the Oreck. Who’d a thunk it? All the fancy circular dust swirling around the Dyson bagless dust container. So many pieces and parts and all that sophistication. Well, scrap all that. How about we make something lightweight, simple and easy. Something that just happens to cleans floors as well as anything you could fly in space! Hello, Oreck. I’m talking to YOU.

Don’t confuse sophistication with effectiveness, or efficiency. I’m sitting across a business leader not long ago and we’re talking about some of his people problems including finding great talent. Talk turns to performance and getting things done. At some point we chuckle at how simple we both view the problem of some existing team members. “Is it really any more complicated than just doing your job well?” I ask. He agrees that that about sums it up. Easier said than done though.

Do your job well.

If you do your job well it’s no guarantee you’ll have a successful career. It could be your job will become obsolete. It could be the job will be replaced by a machine or some lower cost talent. But it could also be that your job needs to re-engineered. The process needs to be revamped. You doing the job well doesn’t mean the process – the actual work you perform – is best done the way you’ve been told, or the way your performance is judged. The blacksmith may have been the best on the planet, but obsolescence took away his opportunity. So just doing your job well isn’t really enough. It’s also about improving the job, finding ways to get better or ways to make things better. It’s that human touch that makes YOU valuable.

Dyson may be taking a backseat only to Hoover in marketshare (last I looked), but Oreck is the new market leader in my house. Maybe it’s about doing your job well (Oreck) or maybe it’s also being able to tell your story better (Dyson). Bells and whistles often trump doing the job well though. It’s true in vacuum cleaners. It’s also sometimes true in the workplace.

That’s just another reason why evidence-based leadership is important. Things aren’t always as they appear. The person who claims credit for the idea may not be the person responsible. They just might be the boss, better poised to claim credit.

The person doing their job well may be viewed unfavorably because the direction given was bad. But they were being the good, dutiful soldier intent on doing their best even if they disagreed with the marching orders. They marched. And well.

See, it’s a dirty, nasty business – this business of leading people. How can we determine who those best people are, and what seats on the bus they should occupy so we get the bus where we want to go?

These are difficult challenges made more difficult by the murky water we’re often caught swimming in. Budgets, committees, customers, vendors, financial partners, corporate politics, culture, competitiveness, cooperation, demographics — these are just a few of the many variables facing us every day when we arrive at the office. We don’t do our work in a vacuum. Even our vacuum cleaners are subject to the elements.

Doing our job well, as leaders, isn’t about being right all the time. That’s impossible. It’s about getting it right more often than not. It’s about seeing when we get it wrong faster than others. It’s about our willingness to own it, fix it and get on with it. It’s also about making sure we focus on the people doing the work because I’ve still never been able to uncover a reason for leadership’s existence if you remove the people. That’s when we just need pure managers. People need leaders. Processes need managers.

Quantum Leap Performance

In-N-OutThe speed with which In N Out serves food is largely dependent on the process. They have a workflow. It’s important that employees are trained and held accountable to maintain that workflow. Can the workflow be improved? Of course. Things can always be improved. But people have to execute the process or customers get angry. And if the process is going to be improved, it’s likely going to come from the people working the current process. They’re going to figure out some slight tweak, or maybe some large revamp. Somebody is going to come up with something.

The process will make the difference, but the people will improve the process. That’s where the quantum leap will happen. Figuring out a better way happens when people engage their brains and think. Brain power. Creativity. Problem solving.

That’s why my work focuses on people. Because they’re the catalyst behind improvement. People fix the problems. They find better ways. Great leadership fosters all the qualities we most need in our organizations. Great leaders make a big difference not because of their own work product, but because of the work product of the people they lead. They knock down roadblocks and speed bumps that prevent their people from doing their best work. They remove the bureaucracy and other constraints that bog down their people. They fight to free their people to do their very best work. So rare are these opportunities that even the novice workers recognize when leaders are letting them soar with the wind of innovation and good thinking.

Nothing trumps great leadership for employee engagement. Nothing.

Randy

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bula network podcast on itunesTo subscribe, please use the links below:

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Leadership's Mandate: Serve Them Anyway - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE

Leadership’s Mandate: Serve Them Anyway

Leadership's Mandate: Serve Them Anyway - HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE

Leaders often get punched in the face. They suffer abuse from every corner. It goes with the territory of being on the front line of the action.

Decisions will be criticized. Directives will be second-guessed. Ideas will be sabotaged. Others may even be jealous.

It’s lonely at the top. It can also be painful. Especially if you’re a servant leader driven to help people do their best work. Invest in people. Mentor people. You’ll bear the marks of service if you remain true to the task. Serve people anyway.

A leader’s resolve to do the chores required of faithful leadership are seen in the scars. They’re mostly inside, but in time they pop to the surface. Added wrinkles and grey hair. Weary eyes.

A leader’s tank is emptied as often as possible in service to her team. The objective is to refill it as frequently as possible so you can continue to empty again. This activity is what the leader lives for – and it’s exhausting. But the leader serves people anyway.

Personal problems afflict the leader just as they do everybody else, but the leader often bears it in silence in order to prevent the team from losing focus. Or because the genuine leader doesn’t want the focus on themselves. Keep the focus on the team and their accomplishments. In the face of family or personal difficulties, the leader serves anyway.

Like a runner enduring a hard marathon, relish the pain that comes in finishing the task. It’s a good kind of hurt. The hurt that comes from knowing you’re doing your very best by people in order to accelerate their performance and their career. It’s what leaders do. They serve their team…no matter what.

Randy

Subscribe to the podcast

bula network podcast on itunesTo subscribe, please use the links below:

If you have a chance, please leave me an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking Review on iTunes. It’ll help the show rank better in iTunes.

Thank you!

Leadership’s Mandate: Serve Them Anyway Read More »

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