Top 11 Ways to Think Strategically (Strategy series 2/3)

Have you ever been told that you need to be more strategic without giving any concrete guidance on how to do that?  If this is a top visible skill that helps you climb the organizational chart, it is worth the effort to grow the ability, regardless of your current position. 

Being a strategic thinker can involve the big-picture, where you are not making decisions in a vacuum.  You consider the future direction, how other departments might be affected, and how the outside world could respond to your choices.

Here are some specific approaches you can take to be a more strategic or a big picture thinker:

1. Take a stakeholder-centered approach.  Step outside of your silo and stand in the shoes of all those connected to and impacted by your company.  Consider these perspectives:

·      Go vertical (up and down).  Step back and survey the landscape to see the system.   You can think about the customer, direct reports, manager, skip manager, CEO, shareholders, and community – both locally and globally.  Ask the question – what do these people want and need?  Where are the common denominators?

·      Go horizontal (left and right).  How are you considering other departments in your strategy?  How is it aligned with the company’s domestic and international vision?  Look across to your direct competitors or beyond to other industries to collect some of the best ideas and trends to make sense of the data in terms of what it means for your team and your company.

·      Use an impact lens.  What will be the result of your strategy on your organization and these various stakeholders?  Do the outcomes support the broader goals of the organization?  What could negatively impact the results?  What do business partners need to understand to ensure its success?  Having some answers to these questions can help you be more thoughtful and strategic. 

2. Consider the timeframe.  What are you trying to do in the short-term v. long-term?  What does success look like in 6 months?  1 year?  3 years?  What are the early signs of success/failure?  What skills and talent will it take to succeed in the long term?  If you were to create a basic road map to navigate to success, what would that look like? How will you know when you have arrived? Whom do you need to support your journey?

3. Think about challenges and ask key questions.  Anticipating problems and trends within your organization and industry can be immensely powerful. You may want to ask: What are the three most important challenges today?  How about the most significant future challenges?  How does today’s work fit into future work?  This is how a commander approaches their work, they seek to understand how each battle plays a part in the larger war.   What challenge would be the hardest to tackle that you cannot see right now? What challenge would be the most important or lead domino that would knock over several other dominos?

4. To be a strategic thinker, develop problem-solving skills.  Most people want to offer a solution to the problem before adequately defining it.  Quick fixes may seem convenient, but they often solve only the surface issues and waste resources that could otherwise be used to tackle the real cause.  The 5 WHYs technique is great for getting at the root cause and preventing stubborn or recurrent problems as they are symptoms of deeper causes.  It was developed and fine-tuned within the Toyota Motor Corporation as a critical component of its problem-solving training.  Sakichi Toyoda, the Japanese Thomas Edison and architect of the Toyota Production System in the 1950s, describes the method in his book as “the basis of Toyota’s scientific approach . . . by repeating the word why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.”  Today, the method is used far beyond Toyota and is popular in lean development. 

Here is an example from Buffer:

1. Why did the system go down?  [Because the database became locked.]

2. Why did it become locked?   [Because there were too many database writes]

3. Why were we doing too many database writes?  [Because this was not foreseen, and it was not load tested]

4. Why wasn’t this change load tested? [Because we don’t have a development process set up for when we should load test changes]

5. Why don’t we have a development process for when to load test?  [We’ve never done too much load testing and are hitting new levels of scale.]

It is going beyond the presenting issue and symptoms to treat the root cause.

5. You can question basic assumptions.  If you are discussing a long-term company strategy upon which years of effort and expense will be based, you can ask basic questions about your beliefs.  How do you know that business will increase?  What does the research say about your expectations about the future of the market?  Have you taken the time to step into the figurative shoes of your customers as a “secret shopper?”  Another way to question your assumptions is to consider alternatives.  You might ask: what if our clients changed?  What if our suppliers went out of business?  These sorts of questions help you gain new and vital perspectives that help hone your thinking.

6. Use First principles thinking.   It is the best way to reverse-engineer complicated problems and reveal creative possibilities. The idea is to break down complex problems into fundamental elements and then reassemble them from the ground up.  It’s one of the best ways to learn to think for yourself, unlock your creative potential, and move from linear to non-linear results.  This approach was used by the philosopher Aristotle who defined it as the first basis from which a thing is known, and now by Elon Musk and Charlie Munger.  It is about thinking like a scientist and not assuming anything; What is true and what has been proven?

Musk gave an example of how Space X uses first principles to innovate at low prices.  People thought battery packs were expensive because that’s the way they have been in the past.  Musk responded,

“Well, no, that’s pretty dumb… Because if you applied that reasoning to anything new, then you wouldn’t be able to ever get to that new thing…. you can’t say, … oh, nobody wants a car because horses are great, and we’re used to them and they can eat grass and there’s lots of grass all over the place and … there’s no gasoline that people can buy.   Historically, battery packs cost $600 per kilowatt-hour… So the first principles would be, … what are the material constituents of the batteries?  What is the spot market value of the material constituents? … It’s got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation, and a steel can.  So break that down on a material basis; if we bought that on a London Metal Exchange, what would each of these things cost?  Oh, jeez, it’s … $80 per kilowatt-hour.  So, clearly, you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell, and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.”

First principles thinking allows you to see problems from multiple angles and interpret complex and conflicting information with curiosity and open-mindedness, and that’s what strategic thinking is all about.

7. See the rich interconnectivity.  Agents can sometimes interact in ways where they fundamentally change each other and something entirely different and unpredictable emerges from the contact.  Paul Cilliers used the following analogy: “a jumbo jet is complicated (it is equal to the sum of its parts), and if you had to take it apart or reverse actions, you could, mayonnaise is complex (once mixed, you can’t separate the parts again; the Interaction fundamentally changes them).”  In other words, complex systems are subject to co-evolution, and once it happens, it’s irreversible.  How can you factor this idea into your strategy or big-picture thinking?  Which steps you choose to take will be easily reversible, and which ones are permanent?  How will that impact your experiments? Knowing this information will help you thrive in a VUCA world.

8. Use Polarity Thinking.  In Adam Grant’s Think Again, he talks about polarity thinking.  For example, how can two great thought leaders have two different perspectives?  Daniel Goleman would argue that EQ matters more than IQ as it can determine 90% of a leader’s success.  In contrast, Jordan Peterson would maintain that EQ is a corporate marketing scheme; he downplays its importance.  How can these two PhD holders be right if they have opposite views?  Polarity thinking can allow both of them to be right, especially when thinking about context.  Instead of talking about why it is important, you want to talk about WHEN it is important.  EQ is beneficial with jobs that deal with perceiving and understanding emotions (customer service, counseling) but less relevant and even detrimental where emotions are less essential (mechanics, accountants).  How can you apply polarity thinking or both/and approach to your business as a creative exercise? 

9. Consider the 4 Cs analytical framework.  Adam Brandenburger writes about contrast, combination, constraint, and context to get creative with your strategy:

·      Contrast.  Challenge the assumptions undergirding the status quo.

·      Combination.  Steve Jobs famously said that creativity is “just connecting things”; what products or services seem independent from or even in tension with one another can you link?

·      Constraint.  A good strategist looks at an organization’s limitations and considers how they might become strengths.  A lack of resources can be a fertilizer for innovation.  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was staying near Lake Geneva during an unusually cold and stormy summer and found herself trapped indoors with nothing to do but exercise her imagination.  Artists are pretty familiar with limitations, from setbacks to structural ones like writing a 14-line poem.  How can you take a no and turn it into a yes?  A client I was coaching was trying to get a budget for a new hire and when she was told no, she remained undeterred.  She came up with an internal rotation idea as a way of repurposing talent to help on other teams.  This solution helped with another goal of reducing burnout and attrition because it gave other people an option of doing different work, exercising their passion, and staying engaged.

·      Context.  If you reflect on how a problem which is similar to yours was solved in an entirely different context, surprising insights may emerge.

10. Scenario planning.  How can you lay out 3 likely scenarios, a least likely one, and a crazy one so you are prepared for as much as you can?  What redundancies can you put into place so that there is support in place if one path fails? How can you anticipate what other people want and are likely to do so you can craft your response? Art Kleiner, Editor-in-Chief of PwC Global promotes the habit of mentalizing - which is thinking about what other people are thinking and instead of sharing what they want or what you want, going a step beyond to articulate what they are likely to do next.

11. Toggle.  Move between the big-picture and day-to-day execution to broaden your view.  As you are completing the day-to-day work, can you easily connect the work to the mission and vision?  Do you know the why behind the small decisions?  Similarly, in those conceptual meetings, can you move from the 1,000 feet view to the 100 to understand the next steps and road map that will allow you to ascend?  Can you take a broad idea and create a plan with metrics and benchmarks while keeping the WHY top of mind?

Once you have engaged in strategic thinking, it is important to have time for reflection so you can consolidate the learnings, get clear on your point of view, and communicate your strategy so your boss knows you are a strategic thinker.   Here are two helpful steps for perception management:

1. Get clear on your point of view.  When you have considered and implemented the above approaches, bring a perspective to the table.  Do people know where you stand?  Your leaders want to know what you think, so when you show that you are considering the big-picture and can articulate your views, you can stand out for a promotion.  Beyond just coming up with ideas, it’s even more powerful when you can take the initiative and show you have thought a few steps ahead of how you would implement something and put your ideas into action.  Having good ideas and strategies are only the first step; you also must communicate them and bring people along.

2. Carve out prep time before your meetings.  It can be too easy for us to feel like we will wing the meeting, but it is more powerful when we are deliberate.  Block out 30 minutes on your calendar before essential meetings so you have time to collect your thoughts, and arrange and package your ideas into a coherent vision and direction.  That shows strategic thinking when you are capable of synthesizing information and articulating knowledge concisely and compellingly.  You can take the same approach in emails, when you are talking about completing work, you can offer the WHY behind the work and connect it to the mission and vision. 

Having strategic thinking skills is essential for all people in the organization to develop because you can better deal with uncertainty and complexity.   A common mistake for leaders as they rise through the ranks is that they stay in operational or execution mode and are not doing enough of the strategy work to get to the next phase of their careers.  Using any of these frameworks can not only help you advance but also strengthen your contributions to your team and organization. 

Quote of the day: “Always start at the end before you begin.” Author Robert Kiyosaki

Q: How do you develop your strategic thinking skills?  What are your best practices for being strategic? Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!

The next blog in this series (3 of 3) will focus on thinking and reflecting practices to strengthen your strategic thinking skills

 As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to engage in strategic thinking for them and their teams, contact me to learn more.

How do you like to think strategically?

What is your company strategy? (Strategy series 1/3)

Having a solid strategy can mean the difference between winning and losing, failing and succeeding.  Knowing the stakes, how do you create a good strategy?  What does strategy even mean anyway?

At the company level, Harvard Business Professor Michael Porter defines strategy as a unique and valuable position involving a different set of activities than your competitors or the same activities done in different ways. The Management theorist Henry Mintzberg famously defined strategy as 5 Ps: plan, ploy, pattern, position, and perspective. He explains:

·      The plan helps you attain your objectives to achieve your intended position.

·      The ploy is a new offering that is usually a surprise tactic that competitors would not expect.

·      The pattern is understanding what was implemented before and pulling out useful aspects going forward.

·      The position is your market location and the role you play in relation to your main competitors.

·      The perspective is how your organization sees itself and how various target audiences perceive you.

Generally speaking, strategy is about your intention or the way you pursue the work to further the mission and creatively grow the business in various facets – employee health, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth.   Let’s break down some strategy components:

1. Strategy is about choices.  To do well, a company must choose to do some things great and not others.  So, how do you choose?  Many people like to begin broadly in these four categories to be industry leaders:

·      Product leader - Nike and Apple are product leaders.  They constantly change their designs or shoe technology to be the coolest and most innovative in the market.  It is hard to outdo them in this category.

·      Customer intimacy – This is about creating an incredible experience for the customers where they are entirely taken care of.  You are prepared to jump through hoops for them.  Most big companies can find this challenging, but Nordstrom is an example that offers excellence in this department.  It is easier for smaller companies to do this like coffee shops, where workers know your name and have your order ready for you upon arrival.  Zappos is known for exceptional customer service.  Tony Hsieh shared a story about taking clients out one evening and when they all returned to their rooms, one of them craved a pizza, but room service was closed. Tony suggested they call Zappos and they came through on the request! Although they didn’t deliver themselves, they found a nearby pizza parlor that would.

·      Operational excellence – This is about performing efficiently at scale.  Starbucks and Chipotle have standardized their processes and have a model that can be exported seamlessly.   

·      Low Prices – Cost-effectiveness can be a powerful strategy.  It is part of IKEA’s competitive advantage.  They target young furniture buyers who want style cheaply. 

Roger Martin, named #1 by Thinkers 50 says to know if you have picked a good strategy, follow this rule – “If the opposite of your choice is stupid on its face, you have not chosen.  For example, if you say, our strategy is to be customer-centric or operationally effective or to value our talent, you can perform this test by stating the opposite - Our strategy is to ignore customers entirely.”  If it does not make sense, it cannot work as a strategy because it would be hard to do that and succeed, let alone stay in business.  Maybe regulated monopolies like the DMV can get away with this, but they do not engender much love.  If the opposite of operational effectiveness is inefficiency, then that’s not a choice because it is not a profitable route.

2. Strategy is about trade-offs.  Michael Porter says, “the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do” because you do not have the bandwidth to do it all.  Focusing on 1-2 things per quarter and adding the rest to your future list. Leaders need to know how to say no often.  As Peter Drucker says, “strategy is saying no to the things that you would like to say yes to.”  We can have many good ideas but only so much capacity to execute.  The key is to choose a couple of priorities because when you have too many, your team spins their wheels, and there is no organizing framework since they all need your attention.  Southwest Airlines is an example of a company that makes these strategic tradeoffs.  They offer short-haul, low-cost, point-to-point service between midsize cities and secondary airports in large cities.  They avoid large airports and do not fly great distances. Their frequent departures and low fares attract price-sensitive customers who otherwise travel by bus or car and convenience-oriented travelers who would choose a full-service airline.  They empower their employees at the front desk to make decisions aligned with their priorities (e.g., planes landing on time, cheap prices, and treating customers well).  It’s the reason they do not have milk on their flights because they do not have refrigerators since they have to be repaired when there are breakdowns, and that can lead to late departures. 

3. Strategy is about problem-solving.  What’s the space between the outcomes you're currently achieving and your aspirations?  If you think about the biggest challenge in reducing client churn from 35-15%, what are the fewest battles necessary to win that war?  How do you go about getting to the root of the problem to make sure you are solving the right one?  How do you frame the question for the best solution?

4. Strategy is about simplicity.  There is a myth that strategy needs to be complicated but to be most effective, you want to make it simple - understandable, memorable, and actionable.  Research by Roger Martin supports this point.  He says, “43 percent of managers cannot state their strategy.  When executives are not clear on their strategy, they have to work harder to see their impact on the organization’s direction.”  Moreover, execution does not like complexity.  Leaders who talk about strategy in concepts and cannot make it simple to move it to a specific goal with the fewest number of executable targets will struggle.  As Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” You can start with these simple questions - where are you?  Where do you need to go?  What resources do you need?  What are your options?  Which one is best to prioritize?  What is the easiest workflow process? What’s your timeframe?  What’s your process to reflect and reevaluate?

5. Strategy is about flexibility. You can be clear on your vision and flexible in your strategy. You do not want a strategy that will handcuff you when a pivot is in order so it is important to check in on your strategy. Pay attention to the context and as variables and circumstances require you to update your strategy, be ready. You also may not have gotten it right the first time and that’s ok, you can alter it after your strategy has been tested.

Strategy is an important part of any business and while some people try to make it complicated, it does not have to be.  As Jack Welch said, “In reality, strategy is actually very straightforward.  You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” 

Quote of the day: “A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.” -Author Lee Bolman

Q: What’s your favorite strategy?  What’s your process for formulating your strategy? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

The next blog in this series (2/3) will focus on how to develop strategic thinking skills.

 As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to engage in strategic thinking for them and their teams, contact me to learn more.

What does strategy mean to you?

What stage is your team in? ( Team Composition Series 3/3)

Teams go through different phases and stages.  Dr. Bruce Tuckman published his 4-stage model in 1965 – Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing and added a fifth stage, Adjourning in the 1970s. The theory explains the predictable and evolving formative periods most teams experience.  As a leader, your job is to recognize what stage your team is at and think about the right interventions to move them along the team development continuum to reach peak performance and achieve more than they thought possible.  

Let’s jump into Tuckman’s five stages:

Stage 1: Forming.  When a team first assembles, there can be excitement, they may not be sure how things will turn out but some know it can be a great experience.  People spend time getting to know each other and understanding each other’s best attributes.  Respect is granted where you listen to others and share your thoughts, some may offer some goodwill and trust.

There should be a high dependence on the leader for guidance and direction during this phase.  Instead of being reactive to problems that come your way, the leader has the responsibility to be proactive and help their team think about what systems and processes are needed to build a foundation for their best performance.   

Here are some crucial questions the leader should reflect on and be able to answer to some degree before getting input from the team and co-creating the collective culture and structure:

·      What is the team’s purpose?  Why are we here and what are we meant to do? What is the vision that inspires people to jump out of bed every day to partake? What have our stakeholders commissioned us to do? What value are we depositing into the world?

·      What are the team goals, objectives, and KPIs? How can we turn the purpose and vision into a quarterly roadmap?

·      What are everybody’s roles and responsibilities, and how can we best contribute?  How can we share that information so everybody knows other people’s job descriptions and so they know who to turn to for assistance?

·      What are the expectations and agreements that will govern our best work?  What are the ways to weigh in and offer best practices and processes to enhance communication and coordination? How do we want to create psychological safety so we can take risks and reach peak innovation? You can lay out the best way to handle conflict and the process for decision-making get feedback and collectively agree on what would be best for the team.

·      What are the style differences?   How can we improve our understanding of individual preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, and increase our knowledge of working with different types of people?  This one does not need to be fully developed and can unfold as the team moves through the stages.

Stage 2: Storming.  In this phase, team members begin to show their entire colors, and conflict typically arises as there are clashes between work styles, beliefs, values, relationships, and personalities.  Decision-making is more complicated as people become more comfortable challenging each other and the leader.  As team members vie for positions to establish themselves in relation to other team members, they second guess coworkers and wonder, "I thought I trusted you, but now I'm not so sure."  If progress is not being made, they have more questions and concerns, assert their opinions and compete for power and attention.  If the team is too big, subgroups and cliques form, and there may be power struggles and blaming of others.   If not handled well, many teams do not move beyond this stage; they stay underperforming, and it turns out to be a relatively disappointing experience.

Leaders can play an essential role in pushing the team forward.  They can normalize conflict and seek to resolve it productively instead of shying away from it.   For example, when a co-worker says or does something that's not aligned with the team culture, step in and ask them to explain their approach and how it matches with the team’s purpose or culture.  You can revisit the original agreements about having an open and safe forum to exchange and pressure test ideas, even if not in alignment with others. Leaders can then allow team members the space to express different opinions and “clear the air.”  If you do not put ideas on the table, you cannot do anything about them.  They can establish and reinforce processes for effective communication, efficient meetings, solving team issues, and building trust to get teams to see that solving these interpersonal challenges is worth the investment.  Leaders can coach members to take ownership of the success of the team and help them design the changes they want to see. Leaders can ask how each member wants to be a resource for others’ development.  They can reconfirm the vision and get people excited to focus on critical collective goals where the intensity of the emotional and relationship issues is overshadowed by something way more meaningful that will have a substantial impact.

Stage 3: Norming.  When you understand that conflicts can arise and resolve issues amicably, you get rewarded with a genuinely healthy working relationship in the norming stage.  Roles and responsibilities are clear, accepted, and appreciated.  The team builds on processes and understands effective working styles.  Big decisions are made by group consensus or another more effective method agreed upon by the group. More minor decisions may be delegated to individuals or small, self-organizing teams within the larger group as responsibility and ownership are distributed.  There is a rhythm of addressing issues and appreciating differences and strengths as people work toward a common goal.  The impact is that morale and productivity increase, trust builds, commitment and unity strengthen and care for each other, and the work grows.  There is general respect for each other and the leader.  The team may engage in fun social activities and people are generally set up to do the work that everybody agreed upon.

Leaders can create success in this stage by empowering behaviors that allow people to be on the same page, giving and receiving feedback for development, sharing leadership responsibilities, and managing change collaboratively.  At this stage, groupthink can seep in; there could be the temptation that members could feel that they need to get along to go along because there is the fear of going back to the conflict stage when things were not fabulous.  The leader can be on the lookout for this unhelpful development and invoke processes to draw out multiple perspectives and normalize productive disagreement, leverage the strengths of each, take quick action, settle conflicts, and maintain a positive, productive climate.

Stage 4: Performing.  This is an incredible work experience where you are thriving on multiple levels producing excellent results, and having great relationships; it is a 1 + 1 = 3 type of equation; it's an intoxicating feeling.  The team is more strategically aware; knows clearly why it is doing what it is doing.  They have a high degree of autonomy as they go after the shared vision; they tend to overachieve and collaboratively make decisions with the leader.  Even with a high degree of freedom, they know they can depend on each other at any point.  Disagreements are resolved within the team positively, and necessary changes to processes and structures are made by the team regularly to serve the evolving needs best. They are comfortable asking for help and offering it because it is about the team-first approach, and there is a level of safety where people can bring their authentic selves, both their successes and struggles.

A leader can foster this successful stage by allowing even more flexibility in team roles, so people feel like they are being challenged. Leaders can create future leadership opportunities, offer development and support to help people achieve their career aspirations.  Leaders can leverage the learning and spark additional team creativity to attain new heights as they collectively advance. Leaders can also pay attention to momentum building and stalling moments. Daniel Pink also offers some interesting research about midpoints, which is the phenomenon of how teams tend to lose steam mid-project.  With this knowledge, leaders can offer galvanizing interventions to work with this dynamic to keep the momentum unbroken.

Stage 5: Adjourning.  This was added by Tuckman two years after his initial research.  Adjourning is the team’s break-up, hopefully when the task is completed successfully, its purpose fulfilled; everyone can move on to new things, feeling good about what's been achieved and ready to contribute elevated skills to their next body of work.  From an organizational perspective, recognition of and sensitivity to people's vulnerabilities is helpful, particularly if members have been closely bonded and feel a sense of insecurity or threat from this change.

Leaders can mark the occasion and adequately reflect on all the excellent work capturing each person’s contributions and making them feel proud for being a part of a memorable experience.  They can create hope for the future that they have skills and abilities and effective work practices that they can transfer to their next project.

 As a leader joining a new team, it is useful to find out what stage your team is in because if you enter their high-performing stage and treat them like they are in the forming or storming stage, they will be unhappy. It’s helpful to begin with a lot of listening and observation so you can spot where they are.  You can ask questions such as - what’s happening on the team, where is everybody, what are the best aspects of this team that you want to leverage going forward, what tweaks would you like to make, if any, to do even better work, how can I be most helpful to advance the team?  Instead of thinking you have the right diagnosis, they can tell you what they want without knowing the details and history.  Once having a deeper understanding, you can co-create the work together so all parties have a stake.

These five stages can progress and regress depending on team makeup, leadership, and client work changes.  When that happens, it is helpful to revisit the forming stage, even briefly, so you can put together a clear roadmap that will add eventual speed to the process. Knowing where your team is and how to support them will allow them to do their best work.

Quotes of the day:  Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is a success." – Henry Ford

Q: What stage is your team in?  As a leader, how would you like to support your team?  As a team member, how would you like to contribute? Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!

 As a Leadership and Team Coach, I partner with leaders and teams to cultivate a flourishing team culture, contact me to learn more.

Bruce Tuckman’s Team Model

team types -which ones are needed? ( Team Composition Series 2/3)

In the last blog, we talked about the definition of a team. This blog will focus on the types of teams depending on the degree of interconnectedness – ranging from independent on one side to dependent on the other, and all the shades in between.  Identifying the kind of team you have can help better nurture it in an intentional way to achieve maximum value.

Let’s jump into 3 kinds of teams:

1. Independent Team.  A mainly independent team is where all members can perform the same basic tasks independently. They may be able to help each other, perhaps by offering advice or providing moral support, but everyone’s success is primarily due to their efforts.  It is about getting what you need by yourself.  In the workplace, it could be teams who work independently and get their job done, and at times they can collaborate to enhance their performance, but they do not necessarily have to in order to complete their tasks.

Some sports examples include bowling and track and field.  In bowling, each person is responsible for knocking down their pins, all contributing to the team’s score and purpose of winning, but essentially individuals do not need to be collaborating at the moment to get their job done.  Similarly, in track and field, players can do different events, and while their efforts contribute to the overall result, they do not need to coordinate to do their job.

Similarly, teachers do not need to collaborate with their coworkers to conduct their lessons and maximize student potential.  Of course, closer teamwork can be beneficial because they can share the most effective pedagogical approaches, build stronger lessons that make connections between subjects, and discuss how each student learns best for a customized approach.  It is also helpful to be aligned with coworkers and have similar norms for students to help build a robust school culture, but they can still teach their classes without depending on coworkers.

2. Dependent Team.  This is when the work of one teammate depends on the work of the others.  It’s like putting together a puzzle, each person has a piece, so they need to problem solve and make decisions together, or the puzzle cannot be completed.

In sports, relay and rowing teams are good examples.  If you are running a 4-person relay race and one person decides not to participate, the whole team suffers and likely would not even be able to compete.  Instead, the way for the team to win is for everybody to perform at their best.  In rowing, members are usually at the same skill level and can move at the same pace because of the high degree of coordination and dependability. 

In corporate, I see this a lot with leadership teams.  They need to come together to align on a vision and commit to getting their teams to carry out the mission and vision to meet the needs of the stakeholders.    

3. Interdependent Team.  This is when team members work together to fulfill a goal, have defined tasks and roles, and depend on each other’s efforts to achieve outcomes.  There can be a range of interdependence with dependence on one side of the spectrum and independence on the other.  Some of their work at specific points can require working individually, and other parts can mean working collaboratively.  For high interdependent teams, the work is integrated; none of the members have separate work.

In sports, baseball and football are common examples.  When playing defense in baseball, there is a higher degree of interdependence; the fielders need to coordinate their positions, catches, and throws to prevent baserunners from advancing.  They share information about batter tendencies and adjust their field position in response to that data.  When on offense, if you are first at-bat with nobody on base, there is some independence.  But, that can quickly transform into interdependence when more baserunners hop aboard as there is a degree of unspoken coordination; the trailing runner cannot advance more than the lead runner. Football is similar; when on offense, there is a high degree of interdependence.  The quarterback connects with receivers by throwing the ball to where the player should be, while the other players will run routes to draw out the defense.  When everybody does their jobs, it works well.  On defense, teammates depend on each other to be in the right spots and make the right moves to stop the opponent from advancing.

This is common in cross-functional teams.  For example, developing a new product requires input from the researchers who need to understand the customer’s needs, the engineer who builds the product, the designer who makes the product look good, the marketer who knows how to brand the product, and the salesperson who knows how to sell it.  Getting those people on the same page initially can make a big difference because they each have knowledge that can enhance the overall product.  While they may work independently a good portion of their time, they know how to quickly come together, exchange information, and accomplish a collective purpose.  If you have departments who do not talk to each other, you get disunity and subpar products, you get a dysfunctional team.

So, Which Kinds of Teams Are Best?

While all teams should understand their roles, responsibilities, norms, and agreements, it is helpful to know what the situation demands and the types of teams you may need as they each offer strengths and weaknesses.

Faced with an interdependent task, you need to have a cohesive and highly communicative team that understands that the team goal is primary and trumps any individual agendas.  They know their impact on each other, the actions that build trust, and how to have harmony.  Interconnectedness requires a higher level of coordination, cooperation, knowledge sharing, and quality time to extract each person’s best.  They will have to meet more frequently because one person’s work impacts another’s.  Interdependence is the invisible glue that engages the team and holds them together.  It sparks motivation and energy as they sync up for efficiency and innovation.  As Keith Sawyer describes in Group Genius, “there is a sort of group flow – a state of peak performance that comes from close work, shared commitment to the goals, and pride in the team.”  Moreover, in today’s VUCA world marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, teams see new challenges pop up all the time so they need the creativity, imagination, complexity of knowledge, and skills that no one individual can bring to the team.  The interdependent team coordination is crucial to solving today’s most complex challenges.

If it is a job that does not require close coordination and knowledge sharing because there are independent goals, then independent teams could be the best way to get the work done in the initial stages and then come together at the end to collaborate.  They still operate in a team environment and can check in with each other at any point to gain assistance and offer support, but do not need to be in daily communication because it could distract from their deep work initiatives.  Teams can fail when you give them tasks that could be a better fit for the individual, no need to force blanket collaboration all the time on all functions, which can be counterproductive. It all depends on defining those crucial moments of collision for peak collaboration and then a divide and conquer approach with opportunities to check in with each other along the way to make sure there is the same drive for alignment.

Author Susan Gerke believes that while some teams think that they are independent or interdependent, most teams are dependent because each person’s work is tied to overall outcomes and pay performance.  And if you’re focusing on goals at a team level and rewarding that, teams should understand how to work as a more dependent unit since there is significant reliance on one another.  At times, individual goals can be met as long as it is in service and aligned with the team. For example, you may have a running back in football who is just 100 yards away from a lifetime record.  Sure, you would like to get the ball to them as much as possible, but if the opposition gains strength and has double coverage on the player, the team would abort that goal of helping that individual and do what is best for the entire team to secure the win, and if it happens that he gets the ball and achieves his personal victory, so be it, it is still a win-win.

When you know the mission and vision of the team, you can design the team with the right level of interdependence so you can combine the individual resources into a collective pool that could be allocated strategically to offer the best and most innovative results.  Tapping into the resources of many will position you to solve the hardest challenges better.

Quote of the day: "It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed."  -Napoleon Hill

Q: What kind of team are you?  What do you look for to do your best work?  What level of interdependence do you need?  Comment and share with us, we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on the stages of teams] 

 As a Leadership and Team Coach, I partner with leaders and teams to cultivate a flourishing team culture, contact me to learn more.

Teams form around a purpose

What Is A Team? (Team Composition Series 1/3)

The word team is frequently used to describe any group of people loosely working together. The term is often evoked even when there are divergent agendas and little reliance on each other.  There are leadership teams, management teams, work teams, cross-functional teams, and more. Depending on the kind of team you are, you can make decisions to determine how to run it for maximum success and to meet the complex business demands in the modern workplace.

A team is not a bunch – a group of people who coexist.  If we find ourselves on the subway with a bunch of people, we are merely occupying the same space; each person is independent of everybody else, some traveling in the same direction and some not, but there is no kind of coordination.  We may not have much in common and are just in the same place at the same time using the same resource.  Of course, if the subway broke down in between platforms for an extensive period, there could be the potential for a team to form as more coordination would have to occur for all people to reach the same goal of getting out safely. 

A team is not a group – a collection of people who can have some common interests but are not aligned toward the same goal.  For example, maybe a leadership coach is working with a group of lawyers in different industries or companies, which can have many overlaps in their practice such as in their experiences, skills, and challenges.  Still, they are not working together to achieve an outcome so there is no need to align.

A team is not a pseudo team, described by Michael West and Joanne Lyubovnikova as “A group of people working in an organization who call themselves or are called by others a team; who have differing accounts of team objectives; whose typical tasks require team members to work alone or in separate dyads towards disparate goals.” There is usually an inability to collaborate effectively and the sum of the team is less than the parts; they could be performing even better independently.

A team, defined by Jon Katzenback, a recognized expert on teams is “A small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and shared approach for which they hold each other mutually accountable.” Peter Hawkins, author and expert on teams adds “and which has ways of effectively meeting and communicating that raise morale and alignment, effectively engaging with all the team’s key stakeholder groups and ways that individuals and the team can continually learn and develop.” In other words, real teams consist of a group of people working toward a common purpose and have a degree of interdependence in a shared context.  There is defined membership where they combine resources, competencies, and bandwidth as they carry out their collective mission and achieve outcomes.  They accomplish tasks that are too large or complex to be done by anyone.  A team only forms in response to a purpose and to stakeholder needs and usually operates within a system.

The best teams synergize; they know that the output of a team will be greater than the sum of individual contributions.  They complement each other, collaborate, coordinate, communicate effectively, have team spirit, and subordinate their personal goals to the larger objectives if they are at odds.  There are clear roles, well-defined outcomes, and norms or working agreements for peak performance.  They know why the team exists and have aligned that purpose with the organization, and to a degree, their own.  Ideally, they can connect that mission with having a meaningful and positive impact on others.  Author David Burkus argues that the definition of a great team has three qualities – intellectual diversity (diverse thinkers), psychological safety (the comfort in expressing your ideas), and a purpose or noble cause.  While each team includes different ingredients that make up their success, there are underlining commonalities.  To read more about successful team ingredients, feel free to read my blog on the topic.

Leaders play a tremendous part in the success of a team.  While they have their vision, they know how to collect meaningful input from the members to shape it collectively.  Great teams do not just happen; there has to be a degree of intentionality and thought in the design, purpose, values, and contribution of individual strengths.  Doc Rivers, NBA championship-winning coach and recipient of the NBA Coach of the Year award uses the South African concept Ubuntu to drive and define his team, which means “I am because we are.”   It is the idea that there are no solitary humans because a person is who they are as a result of their interactions with others.  He says, “the better you are, the better I am.”   The best leaders strike a balance in coaching teams for who they are today and who they will be someday and extracting the best from each to advance the team unit as a whole.

When you are building a team, there are many considerations to design the best kinds of teams, which look very different than groups and bunches.  What type of team do you intend to build?  What will be the philosophy that governs your team?  How will you learn the stakeholders’ needs for you to be successful? How will you incentivize your team to collaborate?  These are the kinds of questions that pop up in the formative stages of a team.

Quote of the day: "None of us is as smart as all of us." -Ken Blanchard

Q: What does a team mean to you?  Comment and share with us; we would love to hear!

[The next blog in this series 2/3 will focus on the types of teams]

 As a Leadership and Team Coach, I partner with leaders and teams to cultivate a flourishing team culture, contact me to learn more.

What’s distinct about your team?

Top 8 Tips for Habit Change (Habit Series 7/7)

The previous blogs in this series have covered various topics relating to how habits work and how we can make them work better.  This blog will offer several tips to further optimize your habit changes.

1. Have Systems, not Goals.  Scott Adams, in his book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” says when you are trying to make changes, it is better to have systems versus goals.  He states how goals can be vague, such as I want to lose 10 pounds, but systems - what you will eat, how you will exercise, what research you will put into your plan, how consistent you will be - will determine the results you want.  Sports coaches understand this distinction, you may have the goal of winning a championship, but it is a system of how you recruit players, run practices, and manage assistant coaches to get you to that result.  Goals are about one moment, such as cleaning my house, but that’s temporary if you do not have a system in place of immediately putting things where they belong.  It is essential to have both –set a goal so you know the direction you are going in and build the system to support your journey.

2. Get a partner.   Sometimes when we are thinking of making changes, it can be easy to talk about it but hard to live.  We are all human with weaknesses and willpower lapses and cannot always do it alone.  Enlisting help, whether a supportive partner or a coach, can help us make sustainable changes.  It is the reason why many people work with personal trainers.  If all we needed were more information on diet and exercise, we would all be walking around super fit, but when we partner with an expert, we are held accountable and can feel more motivated to do the work.

No matter how disciplined you are, you can go further when you go together.  Marshall Goldsmith is one of the top coaches in the business and even he has somebody that he calls every night so he knows he’s doing his ideal behaviors and can be held accountable.  You can make it a two-way street and find a success buddy who wants to devote time to habit changes as there’s nothing more powerful than walking arm in arm with someone to go after your objectives.  If it is the same goal like exercising more, you can take walks and workout classes together and even introduce a little competition to rev the engines.  An accountability buddy allows you to report your goals, share your plans to get there, and help each other with information, connections, and motivation. 

3. Recover from your mistakes.  Let’s say you put in the most incredible systems, but somehow you get pulled off track.  One crazy day in a busy week slams you and you are unable to do your exercise routines.   It’s fine, you are human, the key is to return to the path.  Because some people try to be perfect, when they break their chain, it stays broken, and the next thing you know you have been off your exercise routine for two weeks and now you do not know if you can resume.  The answer is that you can always return at any moment.   Be mindful to prevent a slip from turning into a downward spiral… first, you stop exercising, you feel sluggish, you have low energy at work, are unproductive with your assignments, feel irritable, don’t spend time with your family, and so on. Be patient with yourself, if you fall off the wagon, brush yourself off, and keep going.  Try another strategy, reinforce your commitment, and press on. You got this!

Another reason why people get pulled off track is because they get to a certain level of success and then get too comfortable.  We stop doing what we did to get us there and we slowly degrade like frogs in boiling water, warming so incrementally that they do not realize they are getting cooked.

5. Be quick to eliminate bad habits. A good way to think about habits is to think about cultivating a garden. There will be a variety of flowers, trees, and plants, which are the good habits you will want to nurture and then there will be the weeds, the unwanted habits, which should be ripped out before they grow too large. As Ben Franklin warned, it’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them. Warren Buffet would agree as he adds “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” Taking a preventative approach can save you tremendous energy.

6. Permit yourself to break your routine. Routine and consistency are good, but sometimes the things that used to energize us can lose their effects.  In that case, it is helpful to shake things up and interrupt your routines.  Instead of going for a run every day, maybe you take a bike ride.   When you deliberately take a break or challenge yourself with a new activity, it can reenergize your commitment.  Travel is the ultimate activity because it forces you to do so many new things– figuring out how to navigate a city, where to explore, what to eat, who to meet, and so on.

7. Check-in with your habits. It is also important to recognize that sometimes habits have their seasons. Maybe you were intentional about eating oranges every day for 6 months but it is no longer serving you, so you can introduce another habit for another season in your life. Just because you decide to take one thing on, does not mean it is the thing you will do for the entirety of your life. Periodically check in with your habits to make sure it is the right match for where you are in life.

8. Reflect & celebrate.  Evaluate your habits, what is going well, what is not, and what might need to change?  Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously review your behaviors and beliefs so you know you are spending time on the right things based on where you are.  Comedian Chris Rock will test 100 jokes and record which bits went well in his notebook so he can repeat that specific behavior.

Reflections can happen at multiple levels - daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reviews so you can track your most important habits and measure your progress. Here is one way to reflect… on an excel spreadsheet, in the first vertical column, write a list of important things in your life, such as family, friends, and virtues you are cultivating.  Across the top, list the days of the week. At the end of each day, complete the column by writing a simple yes or no.  At the end of the week, review your scores. If you say your family is your top priority but they do not appear in your busy calendar and you have not checked their boxes, that’s valuable data for you to act on. It is only this reflection time that will allow you to discover the inconsistencies.

Don’t forget to stop and take the time to celebrate.  Give yourself new rewards daily, weekly, or monthly.  Read something fun, go for a hike, book a massage, eat the best icecream, or do any preferable activity that will add the benefit of disrupting your routine.

Some change is hard, but when we can create systems, enlist help, reflect, and celebrate our wins, we can make the process a little less difficult.  And if it is still hard despite our best efforts, do them anyway, it will be a road you can travel to success.

Quotes of the day: “All our life is but a mass of habits.”  -William James 

Q: When was the last time you enlisted help to enact positive change in your life?  What worked? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your favorite tip for habit change?

Consistency is the secret to changing habits (Habit Series 6/7)

The best way for your habit change to take root is to be consistent with your behaviors.  Even when you cannot see the benefits, big dividends will be eventually paid when you put a system in place to follow. 

When you make the slightest adjustments to your daily routine, it can alter your life.  Let’s say you want to exercise more, and you start with 10 minutes a day, it does not sound like a lot, but it adds up.  Jerry Seinfeld, one of the most successful comedians of all time, brought a level of consistency to his daily work that most of us would envy. He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes, and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.  He used a wall calendar that had a whole year on one page hung in a prominent spot.  For each day he writes, he puts a big red X over the day.  After a few days, he would have a chain that would keep growing, the goal is not to break the chain. This method of daily tracking is hugely beneficial for many, but it doesn’t work for all because if you find yourself staring at blank spots that you missed, you can begin to feel bad about your inability to follow a plan and start to get demoralized and give up. Decide if tracking works for you.

Consistency is a competitive advantage.  None of us get where we want to overnight, it is a disciplined process, over time of small intentional steps.  Jim Rohn says, “what simple to do is also simple not to do.”  Successful people are willing to do what others are not.  They schedule time in their calendar every day for their habits.  Practice allows you to rewire your brain and create new mental maps on how to think and behave.  As Tony Robbins says, “Knowledge is not power… it’s potential power.  Execution will trump knowledge any day.”  It is like a light switch, we have to turn it on to enjoy the effects.

Here are two tips to help with consistency:

1. Control your mornings and evenings.  An excellent way to have more control over your day is to have a non-negotiable morning and evening routine so your most important habits are done at the beginning or end of the day, depending on the time that matches your best energy.  A million things can spring up during the day that you may have to react to, but designing the beginning or the end of your day will allow for that protected habit time and fewer if any interruptions.

2. Log your progress. The most effective form of motivation for habit change is progress.  Each small win feeds your desire, and even if the results take longer to see, you can visualize the work you put in. At age 20, Ben Franklin carried a small booklet and used it to track 13 personal virtues and goals such as avoiding wasting time and trifling conversation and would open his book and record his progress.  Following the habit creates a satisfying feeling and a desire to repeat the behavior.  Research shows that those who kept a daily food log were twice as likely to lose weight. It keeps us honest because sometimes we have a distorted view of what we do until we see the paper that puts things into a more realistic light.  The key is to focus on the process and the progress of whom you are becoming as you move toward your destination.  Measurement is useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you and stresses you out.

Progress leads to momentum,  one of the most influential and enigmatic forces of success.  Newton’s first law states that objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless impacted by an outside force and objects in motion stay in motion unless something stops the momentum.  It’s why couch potatoes can feel like they are in a rut for a while and why the rich get richer, and the happy people get happier.

These steps will lead to the compound effect.  When you are consistent, control your time, and log your progress, you ignite the miracle of the compound effect.  In the book by the same title, Darren Hardy defines the compound effect as “Changes that seem small and unimportant at first, but will compound into remarkable results if you are willing to stick with them for years.”

Even when you do not see the changes, the benefits are delayed.  James Clear offers a striking ice cube metaphor.  He says, “Imagine an ice cube as a room heats up in 1-degree increments. 26... 27...28... to 31 and still nothing has happened. Then at 32, the ice begins to melt.  A 1-degree shift, seemingly no different from the previous ones, but this one unlocked a huge shift.”  The hard work you do is never being wasted, just stored. It’s natural to get frustrated with running for a month and not seeing results, but like all things, you need to give it time and the amount of time can vary from one person to the next.

Habits can compound for or against you.  When you are consistently doing your disciplines and tracking your progress, you will be on a growth path, even if it is not noticeable at first, it will yield massive long-term results.  If you choose the status quo or feed negative behaviors, you will accrue a deficit.  It’s a multiplying effect in whichever direction - and, you get to choose.

Quotes of the day: “ I will win, not immediately but definitely.” -Anonymous 

“The secret to success is found in your daily routine.” -Author John Maxwell

Q:  How do you support your best habits?  How do you log your progress?   Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you! 

[The next blog 7/7 will focus on maintaining systems for habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you track your progress on habit change?

When it comes to habit change, Start Small (Habit Series 5/7)

When you are thinking about starting a new habit, it seems like resistance has other ideas.  Partly because some people devise an elaborate plan and create grandiose expectations.  No wonder it is hard to follow habits when the bar is already fixed so impossibly high before you have even begun.  When we start small, pick one, and jump in, substantial things happen.

BJ Fogg, Director of the Persuasive Technology Lab has spent decades thinking about modifying behavior.  One of his key insights is that when we are looking to establish habits, we want to begin with tiny changes. He often uses the example of flossing. You want to start with one tooth. When you set the mental bar so low, you will likely begin and continue until the whole job is done.  In contrast, by designing a higher goal like flossing for 5 minutes 3 times a day, our brains immediately start finding ways to hack our well-intentioned plans.  It is essential to gain some early wins before you expand. 

In thinking about starting small, here are some steps to consider:

1. Define your new habit.  It should be specific, granular, and accomplishable in a minute or less.  The micro-habit is much harder to find an excuse not to do it.  For example, if you want to build a habit to think strategically first thing in the morning, do not just say, “I plan to do some strategic thinking.”  Get more specific, “ I plan to walk into my office and sit with a sheet of paper and pen at my desk for a minute.”  The same technique works for writing, if you are having trouble writing a book, commit to one sentence or 100 words a day.  When you write so little, more will flow out; the initial hurdle of beginning is the hardest.  After, momentum kicks in, taking you for the ride. Also, we have different motivations on different days. If your bar is only to write one sentence a day, you can fulfill that minimum on tough days, but if you are feeling high energy, you can tackle harder goals and write pages, but you do not have to. Einstein offers a good reminder - “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

2. Pick one habit at a time.  Leo Babauta, the author of ZenHabits, uses this strategy.  He said, “We’ve all had those moments when you want to declare, ‘I will change starting today! I want to go to bed earlier, eat less sugar, eat more vegetables, exercise more, be more generous, call my mother regularly, stop checking Facebook obsessively, hug my children, write a book, and declutter the house.’ And if you try to do all of that at once, you end up failing at everything.  But when you devote your energy to just one change, you have more success.  Once one part is habitual, you can move on to the next shift.  Greg McKeown, the author of Essentialism, would agree.  He states that you can only be doing one thing at a time so what is the most important thing you want to be working on?  It is a simple, yet profound concept.  If we do not eliminate, we become overcommitted and our energy will be dispersed instead of concentrated in one area.

3. Calibrate expectations.  When people get started with a new endeavor, they almost always overdo it.  Their ambition leads them to think big and set stretch goals. But high achievers with good intentions can fall short.  When we tempter our expectations and take tiny steps consistently, we can radically improve our lives instead of mustering up giant leaps.  If you decide to work out two hours a day for five days a week, it may be hard to continue that pace.   If you do not get into something you can reliably maintain, you will not do it at all or give up quickly.  We win when we take the right steps day in and day out, but when we do too much too soon, we see obstacles and falter.  Instead of beginning with a 2-mile jog, start with a 5-minute walk and build up.  Your outcomes are determined by your moment-to-moment choices until they become your habits.

According to one study, there is a reason why 25% of people abandoned their New Year’s resolution within the same month because some change is hard.  We are adamant about change initially and then we lose steam and sometimes try to do too much too quickly.  It is easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate making small improvements daily.

4. Preserve and maintain.  When you are creating new habits, it is crucial to keep a system of preservation in place.  You may decide to work more so you can hit some financial goals, but what systems are you putting in place to preserve your health or protect your family time?  People tend to go hard on their goals and have them consume their life that they leave little time for other things.  It’s another reason why starting small helps, so you can keep the other aspects of your life intact that feed you energy.

5. Start Now.  You may be wondering – when is the best time to start my habit?  Maybe during the winter when you will not be out as much and not be as tempted.  Perhaps Jan. 1st as a New Year’s resolution?  On a Monday?  Any day but the weekend?  The answer – any of those options work, just start!  As the Chinese Proverb goes, “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” And, if you’re saying that you already began too late, well, that might be just another tired script in your mind, it’s never too late.  As Albert Camus reminds us, “those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”

We can approach habit change as this complicated process or we can tackle it microscopically.  It is the tiniest sparks that can ignite the most remarkable and most sustainable changes.  Let’s start somewhere, anywhere, and let momentum do its work.

Quote of the Day: “We exaggerate yesterday, overestimate tomorrow, underestimate today.” -John Maxwell.

Q:  What’s the first habit you would like to create?  When will you start? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 6/7 will focus on the power of consistency in habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

Now is always the best time to start

The Subtle Power of your Environment Influencing Your Habits (Habit Series 4/7)

Your surroundings may be impacting your habits more than you think and more than you want, so when you start controlling your setting, you can begin to have progress on the long-awaited changes in your life.

Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith said, “Most of us go through life unaware of how our environment shapes our behavior.”  When you have a conflict between the situation (having cookies in your kitchen in an accessible spot) and your willpower (choosing not to eat them), the environment overpowers your will every time. Those cookies have no chance, especially if they are chocolate chip walnut from Levain’s, the #1 bakery in NYC.  If they are hidden, you will likely not eat them.  Better yet, if they are not even in the house, you will not be tempted.  Physical and visual distance impacts your choices.  If you replace the sweets with fruit and keep them reachable, you will more likely grab that.  To eat healthier, stock your fridge with excellent options.  The key to changing your habits is organizing your environment in a way that makes it easy and sets you up for success. 

The power of the environment is further illustrated in Richard Thaler’s Nudge, he talks about the concept of choice architecture which is the process of organizing information on a page or arranging the items in a physical environment in such a way that influences decisions.  Anne Thorndike, a Physician at a Boston hospital designed a 6-month study to alter the cafeteria’s choice architecture.  Fridges next to cashiers only had soda so store managers added water and placed baskets of water next to food stations around the room.  Over the next 3 months, soda sales dropped by 11.4%, and water sales increased by 25.8%.  The presence of water changed people’s behavior. 

Your social situation also plays a role.  Jim Rohn said we become the combined average of the people we hang around the most.  Those people dominate the types of things we talk about and the activities that we do.  If we spend time with friends who enjoy going to bars, we can be more tempted to overdrink.  If we spend time with avid readers, we are more likely to be influenced in that direction by reading or talking about books. When we hang out with people where the norm is to have good habits, we will make better decisions with our time and set ourselves up for success. 

As French philosopher, Michel de Montaigne wrote - “The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”  Friends and family provide an invisible peer pressure force that pulls us in that direction.   Do you work at an office where staying until 5 is standard because people value family and personal development time?  You will be less likely to overwork and violate that shared expectation.  Join a group where your desired behavior is the norm.  I did when I connected to a philosophy group a few years ago where I met so many people who were just as jazzed about personal development as I am.  It felt fantastic to nerd out openly on topics that I would not have the opportunity to share with my other friend groups.  Successful businesswoman Kathy Ireland said there are two types of people – anchors and engines, anchors weigh you down while engines believe in you, support you, and propel you forward.  Who are the anchors and engines in your life? 

Professor Edwards Deming noted, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”  Many of us become successful or not depending on the world around us and how we relate to it.  If somebody returns from rehab and is plugged into the same environment with the same triggers and social influences, they are likely to find change difficult.  Instead, habits are easy when they fit into your life, and the environment allows for it.  So, what environmental cues are steering your behavior either in the direction of beneficial change or throwing you off track?  Make a list of your environmental triggers that are either helping or hurting you to raise your awareness so you can take deliberate action.

Your physical and social environments may be having a much bigger impact on your choices than you initially thought.  If you want to have a healthy lifestyle, allow your physical environment to reflect your intentions.  If you are going to focus on growth and development, surround yourself with people who share your values.  Be intentional about your choices for the best habits to take root.

Quote of the day: “The key to behavioral change is to pass behavioral control to the environment.” -Author Paul Gibbons

Q: How can you set your physical and social environment up that would optimize your success?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you! 

[The next blog in this series 5/7 will focus on the importance of small steps towards habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

Do you know how your environment impacts your decisions?

Your Personality Wiring is Impacting Your Habits (Habit Series 3/7)

The key to setting habits is to know yourself so you can customize your plan for change.  Not everybody is the same, what makes sense for some may not work for others, what seems like a hill to you may look like a mountain to me, so it is essential to experiment and find the approach that works best for you. 

One thing you can do is cast a wide net to get exposed to many ideas and then drill down on what you want to implement.  For example, you may spend time exploring all of your worst habits, then pick 1-3 to do some deeper reflection and double down on changes you want to make with those.  It is like deciding you want to be a better listener, you may briefly explore 10 books, but choose 2-3 to learn everything from and extrapolate main points, drown out the rest, and be intentional about applying those insights.

Before you jump into implementing habit changes, it could be helpful to explore your natural dispositions.  Here are a few variables to consider: 

1. Factor in your personality style.  Some people may have specific traits that are more conducive to particular approaches.  For example, you may be high in openness, and can more easily experiment with changes to satisfy your curiosity.   You may be high in consciousnesses and may want to follow the habit with a rigid structure instead of a more flexible approach. Are you somebody that can make the change by yourself, or would you do much better with a partner?  For example, we all know we should work out, but some choose to pay a personal trainer because we are more inclined to follow through when there is somebody else holding us accountable.

Beware of the information-action fallacy, which is the assumption that new information will lead to new action. You can read all the books on weight loss, but it does not mean you will enact any of the learnings, we are all human and need help, and some of us find it essential to the process. Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith knows just how hard it is to change, that is why he checks in with his accountable buddy at the end of every day to reflect on his intentions.

2. Consider different approaches.  Some people prefer a phased approach v. an absolute approach.  With the former, you decide you want to give up coffee so, initially, you have coffee some days and decaf others, then after a while, you will have decaf coffee, and then decaf green tea until you break your coffee connection.  With the latter, you may think it is better to stop cold turkey. 

Indeed, not everybody is wired the same way.  Some people think it is helpful to change a lot of big habits all at once.  In his book Reverse Heart Disease, Cardiologist Dean Ornish shares a study that shows what can happen with dramatic lifestyle changes.  Some of his patients found it easier to say goodbye to all of their bad habits and embrace new ones and, in less than a month, they saw dramatic health benefits.  This is more the exception. Other research shows that when people tried one new behavior in one area, many of them were more successful than the people who tried to change a few new behaviors in many areas. This is especially true when it relates to what Charles Dughigg labels a keystone habit, that one thing you change which has a ripple effect on so many other things, which become easier to change. What approach compliments your personality?

3. Understand your response to change.  When you are first thinking about going for a run, it can cause nervousness, but after a while, you get used to it, and it becomes quite familiar.  Changes can be painful and uncomfortable initially, but eventually enjoyable.  The discomfort is only temporary because humans are incredible at adapting.  How well do you know your comfort level with the cycle of change? What’s your approach to dealing with change?

We all have natural dispositions that we can tap into to help with lasting behavior change.  When we consider our personality styles, strategic approaches, and comfort level with the change cycle, we can chart the best course of action that works for us.

Quote of the day: “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.”  -F.M. Alexander

Q:  What are your best and worst habits?  How do you maintain the good ones and how might you experiment with discarding the bad ones? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you! 

[The next blog in this series 4/7 will focus on the impact of the environment on habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

How does your personality influence your decisions

When it Comes to Habit Changes, Start with Self-Awareness (Habit Series 2/7)

How aware are you of your habits?  Which ones are the good ones, which ones are the bad ones?   If you could change one habit, which one would it be?  What’s been the main obstacle to achieving the change thus far? What do you need to finally succeed? To alter our behavior, it’s helpful to begin with self-awareness.

Many of our performance failures can be attributed to a lack of self-awareness.  Once we start tracking our habits and making them apparent, we can take meaningful action.  Practicing mindfulness – a consistent and focused awareness will help to identify the initial cue that ignites the habit loop so we are better informed to disrupt the process.  Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”  For example, you may be working on not giving unsolicited advice, yet you realize you mostly do it when one direct report asks you what you think.  That is your cue.  Or maybe you notice that in the late afternoon after completing a big task and feeling a little bored, you go for the dessert in the break room or in your kitchen.  Those slower moments can be your trigger for sweets. 

Here are some steps to take to be more aware of your habits:

1. Make a list.  When you are thinking about creating or breaking habits, it is first helpful to make a list and organize them into two columns – good and bad.  It is insufficient to only have the items in your mind, writing them down and seeing your words reflected back to you will help start the process of awareness because we cannot address that which goes unnoticed or is not fully captured.  As Peter Drucker would say, “your biggest challenge is defining what your work is.”  What is the landscape of your habits, and where is the work that needs to be done?  Once you have clarity, you can take the next step.

2. Assess your habits.  If you are unsure if a practice is a bad one – for example, you feel like you watch the right amount of tv, you will want to track your behavior for a couple of weeks to gain an accurate picture.  You may think it is the right amount because you watch it after dinner for about 1 hour but failed to factor in the 15 mins. in the morning while getting ready, the 15 mins. during lunchtime, and the occasional times you need a break in the late afternoon.  Surprise… it is closer to an hour and fifteen minutes a day, which adds up to more than you may want to dedicate.  Do you know how many hours you devote to nonessential work like Facebook or reading gossip or trivial news? These numbers are important to know because as Author James Redfield shares, “where intention goes, energy flows.” 

3. Decide to add or subtract.  You can choose a habit you would like to add to your life, like eating vegetables every day, or you can select a pattern to stop, like giving up candy.  Montel Williams followed the Add-In Principle, he says, it’s not what you take out of your diet, it’s what you put in.  A simple reframe – “Today, I’m going to have a salad, steamed vegetables, and fresh figs” allows him to keep his attention on the things he can do, instead of focusing on what he has to sacrifice.  Some research on neuroplasticity shows that the brain is continuously creating new wiring, so when you lay the trackwork for a new behavior by practicing it, it becomes more robust over time.  When we stop giving attention to the bad habit, the connection in our minds becomes much weaker. 

Be sure to choose carefully.  Most people waste effort on things that are not going to change, they may say they want to work less, but it is clear that their drive for financial success is more potent than their desire for balance.  Choose the habits that you are ready to tackle and are eager to move the needle on because we only have scarce resources.  When you laser focus on one thing at a time, small changes can equate to giant leaps forward. 

4. Make it a part of your identity.  According to James Clear, the first step in thinking about habits is to create identity-based habits.  He offers a concentric circle with 3 rungs, the inner is your identity, the middle is the process, and the outer is the outcome.  Most people set habits because they start with the outside and move inside. 

For example:

·      Outside-In: I want to lose 10 pounds (outcome), so I will exercise a few times per week (process), and then I will be skinny (identity).

·      Inside-Out: I want to be an active, fit person (identity), so I will exercise daily (process), and this will lead to weight loss (outcome). 

·      Outside-In: I want to improve my relationship (outcome), so I’ll say positive things every day (process), and I will be somebody who is in a good relationship (identity).

·      Inside-Out: I want to be a great partner (identity), so I’m going to say positive things every day, leading to an improved relationship (outcome).

If you set goals to change habits that do not align with your identity, it can cause tension.  In an article in SUCCESS, Daniel Hardy notes, “Psychologists tell us that nothing creates more internal stress and trauma than what you’re doing on the outside (actions & behaviors) is incongruent with your values on the inside.”  If you set specific financial goals but that takes you away from your #1 value of family, that will cause strife.  The best way to change who you are is to decide the type of person you want to be and then set the behaviors that serve your vision and prove it to yourself with small wins and consistency. That’s living in alignment and it is a freeing experience.

5. Set an implementation intention.  To build a new habit, establish an implementation intention or a premeditated plan.  For example:

·      When I get asked for advice at a meeting, I will get my team involved before I weigh in by saying: “I’d love to hear what the rest of the team thinks before I share my thoughts.”

·      When I feel bored, I will get up, move around, drink some water, and then grab carrots instead of dessert to snack on. 

·      It is a specific plan of action instead of a foggy idea like I want to be better at not giving unsolicited advice or cutting out desserts.  If you are going to start a meditation practice, instead of saying, I will meditate more or I will meditate every morning, you can get even more specific by saying I will meditate for three minutes every morning in my living room after I brush my teeth.

6. Habit Stack. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify the habits that you already do and then stack a new behavior on top.  For example:

·      After my run (current behavior), I will do 5 pushups (new habit). 

·      After I eat lunch (current behavior), I will have a piece of fruit (new habit). 

·      After I sit down for dinner, I will say one thing I am grateful for before eating. 

·      After I get into bed, I will kiss my partner and share words of appreciation.

You can also add the desired behavior to something you already do that will enhance the fun. I discovered this when I started listening to audiobooks several years ago during my boring commute, and suddenly, I started looking forward to the activity because I knew I would have quality learning time.   The same is true for when I go for runs, I listen to podcasts and love the time I spend soaking up information. 

The journey of behavior change begins with understanding yourself.  When you have a clearer picture of your habits, you can decide which ones you would like to change so you can make them a part of your identity.  Setting an implementation intention and habit stacking can make that change process easier.

Quote of the day: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  Historian Will Durant in distilling Aristotle’s sentiment on the topic.

Q: Who do you want to be?  What habits do you want to help you get there?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you. 

[The next blog in this series 3/7 will focus on the role your personality plays in habit formation]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

What are your Identity-based Habits?

A Closer Look at Habits (Habit Series 1/7)

The quality of our habits makes up the richness of our lives.  Habits are rituals or behaviors that we perform automatically.  The good ones, such as daily flossing, exercise, and mindful eating, contribute to a healthier life.  In contrast, the less envious ones like consuming junk food, binging on Netflix, and skipping workouts can detract from our potential. 

These vital mental shortcuts allow us to glide more efficiently throughout our day.  A lot of what we do is mindless; we are constantly reacting to situations without having the time to conduct elaborate mental trials.  One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40% of the actions people performed each day were not actual decisions, but habits.  Without them, we would be overwhelmed and simply nonfunctional at times because we are bombarded with millions of bits of information and lack the time and cognitive resources to decipher all of the data.  By not thinking about routine actions such as how we are going to brush our teeth, what breakfast we will have, and how we will commute to work, allows us to conserve energy on recurring events so we can use our thinking power for more significant decisions.  

How long does it take to change a habit?

The research on this question is varied.  In the preface to his 1960 book Psycho-cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist, wrote: “It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image.”  According to recent research by Phillippa Lally, the typical average is about 66 days.  But in that study, the range was wide, anywhere from 18-254 days because it depended on the kind of habit.  Drinking 8 glasses of water each day is much easier than going for a daily run, which could take closer to 7-8 months to cement for some people.  In reality, habit work never stops because if we do not maintain them, we lose the routine and the benefit.

Other variables can impact the timeline, such as how long the habit has been ingrained in our mind, how compelling the reason for the change, how big the payoff will be, how dire the consequences if we stick with the status quo, how positive the emotions connected to the behavior change, and the surrounding circumstances.   For example, if we have witnessed a friend die of lung cancer, that may prompt us to quit smoking immediately. If we feel incredible going for a daily walk and we start to notice progress shortly thereafter, we are more likely to implant that habit into our lives.

How do habits work?

In two common frameworks, Charles Duhigg in “The Power of Habit,” describes a habit loop consisting of 3 elements, while James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” explains 4 steps in the process by subdividing the second step. 

Here is how they explain it:

1. Cue.  A trigger that initiates the behavior because you are conditioned to notice the reward.

2. Routine.  The behavior you use in response to the cue.  James Clear subdivides the routine into the craving (the motivational force behind the habit) and the response (the actual practice you perform).

3. Reward.  The satisfying feeling you get when you address the cue.

When putting it together, it looks like this:  You wake up (cue), you want to feel alert (craving), you drink coffee (response), you satisfy your craving of feeling alert (reward).  Therefore, drinking coffee becomes associated with waking up.

Habit loops are important because our brains would shut down due to the overwhelm of the everyday minutiae without them.  When we break a habit into its parts, we can understand them better and zoom in to a specific area to triage. 

Knowing our habits can improve the quality of our lives.  Instead of running on autopilot and accruing behaviors that may not serve us, we can be more deliberate.  When we build good habits, we create freedom for the things that we want to do the most.   

Quote of the day:  “For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits.  For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.”  -Hindu Saying  [This was reportedly a favorite of Steve Jobs who sent it out to friends on invitations to his 30th birthday party].

Q:  What cue or trigger starts one of your habits?   What can you do to interrupt the loop?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 2/7 will focus on increasing your awareness to change your habits better]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

When was the last time you examined your habits?

Strategies to Shatter Cognitive Distortions (Mindset Series 2/2)

In the last article, we explored 12 common cognitive distortions or ways of thinking that can be detrimental to our happiness and productivity.  Experts such as Aaron Beck and David Burns argue that we do not need to resign ourselves to this type of thinking; instead, there are numerous ways to identify, challenge, minimize, or erase these misrepresentations from our mind chatter.

Here are some steps we can take to work against these distortions or unproductive mindsets:

1. Learn how to recognize the cognitive distortion and label it.  Now that you are familiar with some common ones, when you start thinking along those lines, you will be able to spot what is happening earlier.   When you notice the distortion, write it down. For example, suppose somebody cancels a meeting. In that case, you may immediately overgeneralize – “this always happens to me, I can’t catch a break” or you may label  - “I’m a total loser, of course, they don’t want to give me the time of day” or catastrophize – “I am never going to get my shot with this decisionmaker.” Spot yourself falling into the pattern so you can get out of it. You have to name it to tame it.

 2. Look at the evidence for and against your thoughts.  You have probably racked up support for your thoughts, but what about exploring the other side? Ask yourself, “what might somebody say who disagrees with you?” “How can I devise five reasons why this is not true.” “What if I was wrong?” You can connect with a friend and invite them to disprove your unsubstantiated theories. Just because you have a thought does not mean it is true so invite scrutiny to test your thinking.

3. Run a cost-benefit analysis. What is the cost of believing this unhelpful theory? Perhaps anxiety, self-consciousness, and excessive rumination.  How about the benefits?  Maybe protecting yourself from a potentially adverse outcome.  Which is worth more?  Write down your thoughts and get some distance so you can better see the holes in your logic.

4. Reframe. Perhaps you have a big presentation looming and you start to indulge your negative thinking and let it run loose. You get really anxious and determine you are going to do terribly because public speaking is your Achilles’ heel. Remind yourself that you can choose your response. You can transform your state of psychological arousal from anxiety into excitement. What if you viewed this presentation through opportunity googles and not a fearful lens? Things can go well - believing that is more productive!

5. Assume positive intent. When we judge people or assume the worst, we can feel bad about ourselves. Instead, if we make an effort to interpret other people’s statements in their best or most reasonable form, we can inculcate ourselves from some of that draining energy.

6. Avoid polarity thinking. Instead of thinking in black or white terms, think in grays. In which context is one thing more true? For example, instead of maintaining emotional intelligence (EQ) is always better than intelligence, perhaps EQ is more valuable in areas dealing with customer service and less valuable dealing with data. You can generate as many different interpretations to break the binary thinking.

Many people may not be realizing that they are engaging in thinking patterns that bring them emotional pain.  When we can surface those harmful thoughts, we are better equipped to fight against them, and live healthier and happier lives.  Allow your mind to usher in the productive and healing vibes that will allow you to thrive in the way you can.

Thought of the day: “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven” - John Milton

Q: What thinking behavior do you notice doing the most?  How do you break that cycle of destructive thinking? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to explore their blind spots around their mindsets and assumptions to better serve their actions, contact me to explore this topic further.

How can you foster positive thoughts?

Thinking Behaviors That Are Sabotaging You (Mindset Series 1/2)

Have you ever stopped to think about how your thoughts may be helping or hindering you?  Is the way we perceive the world always spot on, or could we be way off and not even be aware?

Psychologists Aaron Beck and David Burns researched these questions and concluded that sometimes the way we observe the world is erroneous because we have negative biases that we inherited from our ancestors who were equipped to constantly lookout for dangers.  These flaws in our thinking are known as cognitive distortions - exaggerated or irrational thoughts that can do us great harm.  For example, we can view the world through a negative filter and fail to see any positives.  This thinking pattern is so habitual that we do not even realize what is going on and conclude that it is simply the way we are. But, does it have to be?

Here are 12 common irrational thought patterns that simply are not serving us:

1. Catastrophizing is when we blow circumstances out of proportion and think about something unbearable happening that we will not be able to endure.  Maybe we made a mistake on a project and now think about the worst-case scenario, such as getting kicked off the team, fired, and possibly rendered forever unemployable! 

2. Emotional Reasoning is when we interpret reality based on how we feel in the moment; our moods determine how we see the world, and if we feel something, it must be true.  We may be feeling sad about our work performance after a poor presentation given in a meeting and then conclude the job is just not working out and we are not meant to be in this field.

3. Overgeneralizing is when we perceive a global pattern of negativity based on a single incident.  Failing once can translate into believing we fail all the time. The clue that you may be overgeneralizing is when you use the words, “always,” “never,” “every,” or “all.” 

4. Dichotomous Thinking is about having only two ways of thinking – all or nothing; feeling like the victim or the oppressor; you either win or lose; something is either good or bad.  Saying, “I get rejected by everybody” or “it was a complete waste of time,” shows an inability to see the hundreds of interpretations in between. This type of thinking keeps you rigid and stifles your creativity and problem-solving abilities.   

5. Mind Reading is about assuming you know what people are thinking without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “They think I’m a lazy contributor on this team.” We jump to conclusions because we think we know what the other person is believing.  We could be presenting on a video call and one of the team members yawn so we conclude that they must think we are boring or do not respect me, but in reality, they were up all night from their new baby and their tired expression has nothing to do with us.

6. Labeling is assigning negative traits to yourself or others where it becomes part of your identity.  You may engage in forgetful behavior where you fail to do a part of a project and condemn yourself to be an absent-minded and disorganized person. This can have massive negative impacts. For example, thinking you are an incompetent person can cause a looping effect where it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Over time you will develop schemas about yourself and your prospects and become the inept person you carelessly labeled yourself to be. Engaging in a few isolating behaviors is not the same as your character.

7. Attachment is thinking you “have to” or “must do” something because it is part of your identity.  When we adhere to only one vision of ourselves and believe that possibly this one person or this one job can only make me happy, we close ourselves to many other options that could make us even more fulfilled.  Sure, living in NYC can mean a blissful life, but so can living in other cities (I think).  You may have your heart set on being a teacher because you like helping others, but there are multiple other ways you can achieve those same ends, such as being a coach, a facilitator, working in learning and development in an organization, being a mentor, volunteering, and so on. We cannot be sure unless we approach the situation with an open mind and welcome other possibilities.

8. Negative Filtering is when you focus exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives.  Thinking about all the people who do not like you at your company, instead of the ones who do. You may get 6 pieces of positive praise on your presentation and 1 piece of constructive criticism and your mind zeros in on the negative and forgets the positive. How do you take a moment to look at the whole picture and really take in the good?

9. Discounting Positives is when you claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial or do not really count because of various circumstances.  For example, disregarding your best friend’s compliments of you because that is what friends are supposed to do. Or, if success came easy then it does not really mean much because you did not have to work hard for it.

10. Blaming is about focusing on others as the source of your negative feelings, maybe you blame your parents for how you turned out or you hold your boss culpable for your unhappiness and refuse to take responsibility for changing.  It is common to think, “if this person would just quit their full-time job of making me miserable, all my woes would disappear.” What purpose is blaming serving? How do you start with yourself and your contributions?

11. Always Being Right is the belief that we must always be correct and will fight to prove that we are.  In this mindset, we fail to consider the other person’s feelings in the discussion, and it becomes hard to sustain a relationship because nobody wants to be in constant competition. Meir Ezra notes, “The more a person needs to be right, the less certain [they are].” What is behind that desire to be right? What do you win? More importantly, what is lost?

12. Personalizing is when we attribute a disproportionate amount of the blame to ourselves for negative events, and we fail to see the role others play in causing certain events.  “The partnership ended because I failed.” Yet, you do not take into account their part.

These types of twisted thinking can interfere with our intellectual development and harm our mental health. Epictetus stated, “What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but how we think about them.  It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”  When we can identify our thought patterns, we can decide what we want to do about them. We have more choices than we realize.

Quote of the day: “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.”  ― Eckhart Tolle 

Q: Which one of these distortions do you most often use, and when do you use them?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog 2/2 will focus on strategies for correcting our counterproductive thought patterns.]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to explore their blind spots around their mindsets and assumptions to better serve their actions, contact me to explore this topic further.

Manage your mind for more happiness

What’s The Best Way To Address Accountability? (Accountability Series 3/3)

Having an accountability conversation to let somebody know where they stand is essential for an excellent culture.  It should not just happen in one conversation where all your stored information comes out at once, but it should be communicated through multiple interactions. And, as the recipient, while it may not feel good at the time, it is a gift to have that valuable information to know exactly where your performance stands.

Here are some steps to consider when thinking about an accountability conversation:

1. Check in with yourself.  When a work issue is causing you stress, a typical first instinct is to point outward and blame others.  But if you want to have a productive conversation with someone who appears not to get it, first consider if you may be contributing to the problem (even unintentionally).  Instead of asking, “Why aren’t they doing your part,” you can ask a series of questions to look internally first, such as “Is there anything I can do differently to help? Have I been clear about my expectations?  Have I asked what I can do to help?  Have I taken time to brainstorm and review processes?  Have I built an accountability plan with them?”  Self-awareness is a leadership superpower and reflecting on this may help you recognize any unhelpful patterns. 

2. Use the Accountability Dial.  Author Jonathan Raymond offers the accountability dial as a helpful framework to keep others accountable.  There are five steps: mention, invitation, conversation, boundary, and limit.

A. Mention. A brief comment or piece of feedback that you noticed that you want to check in and get more information.  It can be something that might be counterproductive.  For example, “I noticed that the proposal that went out today had aspects that were a little unclear.  If I was the customer, I think they would have had a hard time figuring out what we meant based on our previous meeting.”  The mention can also be empowering – I loved how you kept that meeting on track; I know how distracting it was to keep pace with the conversation going on in the chatbox or off to the side.  It is best to mention right after the event and not wait for the quarterly or yearly meeting.  The mention is about offering a piece of data you notice that is either helpful or hurtful to the person to have timely feedback so they know what to do more of or what to do less of. 

B. Invitation.  This is about asking the person to connect a few mentions and get their take to put things into context and learn about that fuller picture.  Three different isolated mentions on the same topic can help them see a pattern.  For example, if your team member is constantly missing deadlines, you could begin by saying, “I’ve noticed that you seem to need a little more time to get the work done lately (or insert another behavior).   What’s the pattern here?”  They may not have been aware that they have been late in different aspects of the project; let them make that connection and give any additional context that can get at the root challenge.  To test to see if there is alignment on expectations, you can have them provide a self-assessment of what quality of work would look like and what standards would need to be met.

C. Conversation.  It is a one-on-one discussion to learn even more about what’s going on.  You brought information to their attention in your mentions, and in the invitation, you welcomed them to think about their behavior in the big picture.  The goal of a conversation is to listen, remain genuinely open to their take on things, and restore the work instead of casting blame.  It helps to assume positive intent and come from a place of curiosity and support and not a mindset of hostility where there are unhelpful and untrue assumptions being tossed around.  You can start with any of the following:

· The expectation was X and Y was delivered, what is behind this misalignment?  

·  There is a conclusion I have drawn based on your behavior, but I know I only have a snapshot and that there is crucial information I may be missing, so would love to learn more from you.

· Your performance fell short of the goals we set together. I would love to know the barriers that got in the way and what we can do differently going forward.

· Help me understand the disconnect of where we set the goals and where we fell short so we can do things better next time.

You may discover that they are not “lazy,” “incapable,” or “unreliable,” but rather, that they are unclear on organizational goals, and therefore, are not properly prioritizing projects.  You may discover that they need more feedback to do their best or that other obstacles hold them back.  In Crucial Accountability, Kerry Patterson et al note that 70% of project managers admitted that they would be late because deadlines were initially unrealistic.  While none of these factors entirely excuse a broken commitment, lack of initiative, or follow-through, acknowledging what they have said, understanding the underlying issues, and noting where they are coming from can give you a clear idea about how to move forward, even if it means you disagree.  This is an excellent opportunity for you to be supportive and offer positive reinforcement.

If you do not learn anything valuable and they are just slacking for some reason, you need to deliver the truth.  Talk about how their behavior is impacting the company.  You may say, “I know you do not intend to take the team sideways, but when you do not return emails on time that have action items in them, it makes life harder for the rest of the team and more difficult for the customers and stakeholders.” Pointing out their specific behavior always works best when you have built trust and demonstrated that you care.  Maybe they did not have any idea of their impact or did not think it was a big deal, but now understand, and do not want to be the person everybody chases, so they are ready to make some adjustments.  You can also use the contrasting approach, which shares what you are not intending before the feedback.  For example, “I’m not saying it was wrong for you to disagree with me in the meeting, we need to hear everyone’s view to make the best choice, but I think the team listened to your tone as attacking, and it would be better to address your concerns with me privately or in the meeting with a curious and positive manner, how do you see it?”

It’s essential to leave the conversation where you both understand what the underlying issue is, how to address it, what success looks like, what needs to be done, by who, and by which date to achieve it.  Having that type of clarity and mutual agreement on how to move forward can be a game-changer.  You can also have them suggest that they are planning to make changes and even ask them if they are open to trying some new strategies.  You can reassure them that you want them to be set up for success and get one last confirmation – “does this all seem doable given other things on your plate?”

D. The Boundary.  If the conversation and feedback did not change their behavior, you need to have another conversation, and talk about the boundary or the limit.  The boundary is the idea that even though they have been working on something and made some change, it is not enough or not to the desired standard.  I know this can be uncomfortable, but you are providing feedback in the spirit of helping them grow.  Not addressing the behavior would send a message that you approve of their behavior which can continue to harm the team.  The outcome could be that you monitor a specific behavior change you want them to show in a reasonable time frame.   

E. The limit.  A clear consequence and the last step before the person is dismissed. In the conversation, you tell the person you have tried everything you could – coaching, mentoring, feedback, and other supports.  Where we go from here is on them.  They can take the weekend and tell you if they want to stay and present their plan of what they are prepared to do that has not been tried or if they want to go because it is not the right fit for them now and they want to move on.  Two things can likely happen – they can reflect or talk to others to have that wake-up call to realize they can be better and move into another gear and come back and show this newfound initiative, or they will select out.  When you have determined that the person cannot meet the expectations, don’t delay, let them find another place where they can thrive.  As a leader, it is not about keeping everybody happy, it is about keeping the organization humming along where people can achieve their best, and a crucial part of that is emphasizing accountability and maintaining standards of excellence; that’s part of what keeps morale high. 

Raymond stresses that the Dial is not a linear process – it can be turned up and down depending on the situation.  For serious issues, you may jump immediately to the conversation or even the limit.

You can also use a more simplified 3-step framework for accountability which would be to communicate the expectations and observations, follow-up to make sure the expectations are communicated right and are being met, and make the consequences clear. The consequence can be positive or negative, if they are exceeding an expectation, they could get certain recognitions. A common pitfall is that most managers do not do step 1 or 2 well but then go heavy on the consequential in an annual review because they have 6-12 months of stored feedback.

When one team member’s behavior and work performance negatively impacts another, you need to hold the person accountable.  An excellent tool to use is the Accountability Dial, which starts with mentioning the behavior, inviting them to see patterns, having a conversation to learn more, showing the boundary, and utilizing the limit.  Keeping people accountable is the kind thing to do because not addressing their unacceptable behavior would be perpetuating the cycle of failure and wreak havoc on all those involved. 

Q: How do you initiate your accountability conversation for maximum results?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

Quote of the day: "When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice." ― Brené Brown

"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else." David Brin, Author 

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help with all kinds of accountability, contact me to learn more.

The best cultures embrace accountability conversations

What’s Your Accountability System? (Accountability Series 2/3)

Now that we talked about the importance of accountability and why it is not happening, let’s jump into creating a process that fosters excellent accountability.

When leaders can put some of these structures in place, they can nurture an accountable culture.  Here are some steps to consider:

1. Clear Expectations.  The first step is to have a meeting to be crystal clear about your expectations — the desired results you’re seeking, the capabilities needed for the job, how you’ll measure success, and what standard you seek.  It does not all have to come from you. The more skilled your people are, the more ideas and strategies they can contribute.  They should have the autonomy to determine the HOW in achieving their objectives. When you have a genuine two-way conversation about ways to contribute and tactics that they are considering, you will create the necessary buy-in and build confidence in tackling the project.   Before the meeting’s end, you can learn if you are on the same page by asking the other person to summarize the critical pieces - results, capabilities to be successful, metrics, and approaches to reinforce that alignment.

A. Clear outcomes.  What are the outcomes to be produced?  While the employee has the autonomy to figure out how they will achieve results, it is vital to specify a general destination and set the standard of excellence so they have the example.  If I tell you to put together a presentation and do not explain some requirements such as length of time and critical aspects, your understanding of a presentation can be vastly different from the other mine. Let’s talk about the parameters to mitigate any confusion.

B. Clear capability.  Be sure that the person you are holding accountable has the skills and resources they will need otherwise they might be set up for failure.   You can ask yourself, what do they need to meet the expectations?  If the person does not have what’s necessary, can they acquire what’s missing?  If so, what’s the plan?  If not, how can they delegate parts of the work?

Here are some helpful questions to ask to create active effort (certainty on how to move forward) rather than anxious effort (uncertainty which morphs into procrastination).

·       What do you see yourself needing to do to be able to achieve the result?

·       What could get in the way?  Excuses can be helpful signs; once surfaced, they can now be included in the roadmap.  You can offer a follow-up – “Given what's in the way, what’s possible or what else can be done?”

·       Where are the first 1-3 places to begin?

C. Clear measurement.  During the expectation conversation, you should agree on weekly (or whatever cadence works best) milestones with clear, measurable, objective targets.  If any of these targets slip, jump on it immediately, brainstorm a solution, identify a fix, redesign the timeline, or respond in other productive ways that get the person back on track.  Nothing frustrates leaders more than being surprised by failure to meet expectations in the 11th hour.  Sometimes this failure is due to premature optimism on both sides, or the direct report is reluctant to ask for help. Either way, it can be avoided or mitigated with clear and transparent communication.

2. Clear feedback.  In one of your first feedback meetings, you can ask them how they like to receive feedback and consider their preferences.  Honest, open, ongoing feedback is critical to their development, and just because you have said something once, does not mean you are done; good feedback should be continuous and reinforced.   People should know where they stand.  You can ask yourself, is the person delivering on their commitments?  Are they working well with other stakeholders?  If they need to increase their capability, are they on track? When you have clear expectations, capabilities, and measurements, your input will most likely be fact-based and easier to deliver. The feedback can also go both ways — is there something you can be doing to be more helpful?  

Co-Founder of Pixar Ed Catmull said feedback should always leave an employee inspired.  Ask questions that start with what or how, such as:

·      What will you have to do to have this done on time (rather than, do you expect to have this done on time)?

·      What ideas do you have (rather than do you have any ideas)?  

·      What do you want to do next regarding your objective? 

·      When this happens, what do you want to happen next?

·      How will you keep yourself and the project accountable for what you want?

·      How will we accomplish X by this date with only Z resources available to us? (instead of jumping in and helping, let them take a first crack at solving the problem).

·      I need your help, when you miss meetings frequently [insert behavior], I feel/think/wonder that you are not committed to the position.  Could I have some clarity on this?  What would it take for you to be at the meetings?  In the future, I expect you to be at the meetings because your input is essential.  What do you see getting in the way of this expectation? What’s needed to meet it?

Undergirding all these questions is genuine care, trust, and support. You should let the person know that feedback is about providing supportive accountability, not in remediating problematic behaviors or surveillance.  It is meant to accelerate their behavior through continued conversations so they can do hard work, think, learn, grow, and contribute.  When employees believe their bosses are interested in their success, they feel less guarded and less inclined to hide their underperformance.  If you have not built that trust or if the feedback is not sincere, it will not work. When the trust is there, people will be open to sharing failures that can be addressed at the moment because they are learning opportunities and not mistakes to be covered up.  When people feel criticized or attack or when there is fear, they will shut down and it will be a culture of psychological danger.

When the job is done, you can ask them to walk you through how they did their work to engender pride.  You can learn about the parts they struggled with and the parts in which they were incredibly satisfied.  Other good questions to ask:

·       What did you learn? 

·       What are you most proud of?  

·       What aspect do you want to carry forward to your next project?

3. Clear consequences.  How would they like to be held accountable so you can cater to their style within limits?  This is important because you can use the same approach with different people, and one person could be embarrassed while the other empowered.  When you know your people’s preferences, you can better support them.

4. Model accountability by going first.  A great way to create a culture of accountability and enhance psychological safety is to share that accountability travels both ways.  While you will hold your direct report accountable for their work, you expect that they will hold you to it as well.  If we want to be the best we can be, we have to have high standards and when they are not reached, we want to address them, so we know what to do better and differently next time.  You can share the standards you have for yourself and when they notice you have not met them, your expectation is that they are going to tell you where you have fallen short so you can learn and grow together.  It is not about criticizing in public, but constructively addressing the issue in private.  When the leader goes first it emphasizes the importance of promoting a culture of ownership. 

5.  Address challenges that could surface at the beginning.  You can share that when a promise of delivery is made, there is an expectation that it will be done.  If something comes up that compromises the timeline, it is essential to bring it up.  I’d rather know about a situation days or weeks before the big meeting so there is enough time to come up with creative solutions or workarounds or bring in support than to learn 5 minutes before the meeting with no opportunity to remedy the situation.   The damage to the relationship is most severe when people wait too long to bring up an issue because they do not want to disappoint the person or they have a hard time with tough conversations. Delays do happen, Author Kim Scott shared that when writing her book Radical Candor, she thought it would take 3 months, but it ended up taking 4 years but she was able to keep the trust in line because she was always upfront about shifting timelines.

If you are reasonably sure that you were clear with expectations and did what was necessary to support their performance, and they still have not proven to be accountable, in that case, they may not be a good fit for the role and could lead to a change (in position, teams, or in the company) that would create more of a win-win.

Setting up a process of accountability, including clear expectations, feedback, and consequences can empower others to take responsibility.

Q: What is your system for holding others accountable?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

Quotes of the day: "Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame." ― Courtney Lynch

"Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership.  And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have." -Pat Summitt

[The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on having an effective accountability conversation]

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help with all kinds of accountability, contact me to learn more.

It all begins with clear expectations

Why Accountability Matters And Why It Fails (Accountability Series 1/3)

We all want to work in an environment where people deliver on their commitments.  In fact, the presence of accountability is a key reason why companies have a high belonging score.  When an organization stands for a noble purpose, has a compelling mission and vision, and noteworthy values, it is important for leaders to create a culture of accountability where people hold themselves and each other responsible for delivering on these promises.

Accountability can often get a bad rap.  Traditional accountability might have been viewed as more punitive; when people did not hit their targets, there were consequences.   This often conjures up feelings of blame, shame, and guilt which triggered them to shut down and feel discouraged.  While accountability can be a little bit of an uncomfortable process at times, when it is done right, it looks more like a supportive rather than a disciplinary process and can be a morale booster.  Founder & CEO Peter Bregman says, “Accountability is not simply taking the blame when something goes wrong.  It’s not a confession; it is about delivering on a commitment.  It’s a responsibility to an outcome, not just a set of tasks.  It’s taking the initiative with thoughtful, strategic follow-through.”  People can learn to love accountability when it is about helping to achieve better results, improve their performance, and get recognition for their tremendous efforts.

Accountability is necessary at all levels of the organization.  Executives at the top of the org chart cannot be accountable unless the people who report to them also follow through on their commitments.  Leaders play an essential role in inspiring others to advance the organizational goals without micromanaging or using a pure command-and-control approach since it is an ineffective relic that does not promote people’s greatest work.  The best accountability can address the WHAT and WHY of the work by providing a framework with expectations, boundaries, and consequences. It can also handle the HOW by granting autonomy to people to pursue what they think is best to achieve the agreed-upon results. For example, a person should know what exactly they are building and why they are building it through co-creating the broad strokes with their leaders but can make numerous mini decisions in executing the work.

Some of the best managers support, mentor, and coach people for self-accountability; they are interested in providing maximum effort and engagement to achieve desired results, are receptive to feedback and improvement, and remain resourceful as they aim to achieve solutions.  Even more than keeping commitments, self-accountability is a considerable driver of happiness and engagement.  In Dan Harris’s 10% Happier, he explains how well-being and happiness are correlated to the level of accountability people take for their lives; it is a prime motivator for their evolution.

Why Accountability Fails:

Research shows that many managers, even senior ones, are surprisingly weak in this area.  According to one study in the Harvard Business Review, 46% of high-level managers were rated poorly on the measure "holds people accountable for when they don't deliver."  Data offered by Tom Starner in HR Dive shows that 82% of managers acknowledge they have limited to no ability to hold others accountable successfully and 91% of employees would say that effectively holding others accountable is one of their company’s top leadership-development needs. 

It’s not working from an employee perspective either.  Gallup found that only 14% of employees feel their performance is managed in a way that motivates them, 26% get feedback less than once per year, 21% feel their performance metrics are within their control, and 40% feel as if their manager holds them accountable for goals they set.  

Let’s explore the top reasons for the lack of accountability:

1. Organizational challenges.  A lack of accountability can sometimes be unintentional if it results from underlying issues, such as unclear roles and responsibilities, limited resources, poor strategy, or unrealistic goals.  This is why some leaders report not knowing exactly how to get people to be more accountable for results if they have a lack of organizational clarity or if the goalpost is constantly shifting.

2. Leadership challenges.  Before pointing fingers elsewhere, you want to check in with yourself to ensure you are not part of the problem.  Have you set the person up for success?  Have you defined clear goals and provided an accountability plan from the beginning of who will do what by when?  Have you given feedback along the way and monitored metrics?  Have you addressed issues and not let them balloon by ignoring them?  If the answer is no to these questions, it will be hard to hold people accountable when some of the responsibility may lie with you.

3. System Changes.  Leaders sometimes find system changes impacting accountability.  Maybe the norm was to grant leniency and look the other way on small things.  Now, if the message is to impose stricter standards, your direct reports could be dismayed if you do not communicate the recalibrated expectations.  How could they be rated a 3 / 5 when their whole career, they have been a 4 or at the top?  They may wonder if they are suddenly a 3 because only a certain amount of 4s can be granted.   These are painful conclusions that the person can draw about themselves and their boss, so a manager may be nervous about turning the dial up on accountability if they do not have good reasoning behind the system changes and how they will improve the culture.

Most companies would admit that they have an accountability problem.  Leaders in particular struggle with it because there are underlying organizational issues or a lack of confidence and experience in their leadership.  Accountability does not have to be complicated; it can be a positive and productive experience that builds morale and excitement and contributes to an incredible culture when it is done right.

Quotes of the day: "Understanding the true meaning of accountability makes us strong and enables us to learn" -Sameh Elsayed

"On good teams, coaches hold players accountable, on great teams players hold players accountable." ― Joe Dumars

Q: What is your biggest challenge when it comes to accountability?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 2/3 will focus on setting up a system for accountability] 

As a Leadership and Executive Coach, I partner with others to help with all kinds of accountability systems, contact me to learn more.

How do you maintain a culture of accountability that inspires people’s best?

How Is Your Executive Presence?

The term executive presence can be vague and mean different things to different people, like the concept of leadership.  Is it about how you show up by what you wear, how concise and convincing you are in meetings, how great you present, how much credibility you have, or how strong your decision-making and strategic thinking skills are?

When you ask a group of managers who aspire to the C-suite what it takes to get there, they invariably mention executive presence, even if they may not be clear on what it means.  In a survey conducted by Coach Source, Dr. Brian Underhill shares that from a manager’s perspective, 42% of people who seek a coach want to develop their executive presence.

So, what are these “make or break” factors in considering whether to promote somebody into the upper leadership rank?  Executive presence is not just about one or two factors, such as how you look or dress, but about the whole person.  It may seem like some people either have it or not, but they likely worked hard to achieve it, and it can be developed with intention.  Executive presence, or I would extend the concept to also include leadership presence is about inspiring confidence in others because of character, capabilities, and reliability.  These leaders can handle complex and unpredictable situations, make tough decisions quickly, and hold their own with talented and strong-willed team members.

The Bates Executive Presence Index, a research-based, scientifically validated assessment measures executive presence according to 3 big categories: character, substance, and style.  I’m going to borrow aspects of that framework and include my categories based on commonalities from clients I’ve coached on this topic.

Components of Executive/Leadership Presence:

1. Character.  Arguably one of the most important is about the personal traits and values that define you.  Two key components include:

·      Integrity - Acting authentically, transparently, sincerely, and in accordance with your actions and beliefs.  You live up to ethical standards because you care about doing the right thing for yourself and others, even when it is unpopular.  You are credible, trustworthy, professional, dependable, and know how to keep your promises.

·      Humility - Part of being humble is being self-aware – you have a good sense of your strengths, weaknesses, and the impact that you want to make.  At the same time, you know you do not know it all, so you seek out diverse perspectives and feedback, you listen inclusively to others, and you believe that all people have worth regardless of title or position.

2. Substance.  This relates to depth and overall maturity and can be split into practical wisdom and emotional intelligence.

·      Practical Wisdom – Having those hard skills and competencies in getting the job done.  You also exercise good insight, judgment, vision, strategic thinking, and collaborative skills in bringing teams and stakeholders aligned and along with you as you achieve results.   

·      Emotional Intelligence – You show calm and balance when under pressure because you know how to manage your own emotions.  You do not have erratic and unpredictable outbursts or become emotionally unhinged when you clash with others or receive pushback on your ideas; instead, you use your emotional strength to understand the situation better.  You are also attuned to others’ emotions because you listen, ask questions, factor in other perspectives.   You show care and build great relationships because you can read the room, receive data, and make pivots to fit the moment better.

3. Style – This is about how you present yourself and how others see and experience you quickly, if not immediately.  It is the first impression.  Two critical aspects include presence and effective communication.

·      Presence – This is more than the right clothes, firm handshake, eye contact, or voice projection; it is about exuding confidence, being calm in hectic times, and adapting your demeanor to serve the situation better.

·      Effective Communication – Relates to talking with intentionality.  You are clear, brief, direct, and speak with authority.  You do not bog others down with the details or open the floodgates and blast them with information; you know how to get to the bottom line swiftly.  You use your communication to empower, inspire, and bring out your best.  That may entail providing a forum where others feel safe, expressing themselves, asking questions, and feeling stretched in their growth because of your high expectations in their development and support. 

Like many intangible leadership traits, these skills can be grown, especially if you have a baseline level of self-confidence and a willingness to deal with unpredictable situations that come with the territory at the executive level.

Let’s jump into some things you can do to develop executive presence:

1. Skill build.  Understand where you want to go, assess your starting point with your current skill set, determine the new proficiencies you will need, and pick one capability to grow.  You can raise your awareness by reading about it and then practicing the skill.  Perhaps, you want to begin with style and specifically your public speaking.  You want to stand and deliver confidently, clearly, and concisely to large groups, answer questions effectively by maintaining curiosity and not becoming defensives, and handle pressure calmly.  You can start with the headline, provide some more details, and hold space for others to jump in with questions, then go deeper on topics that interest them.  Being comfortable with releasing some control means that they can drive the conversation, and you can handle whatever comes your way.  Speaking in shorter bursts is helpful because it is more of an exchange and not a lecture.

2. Get support from others. You can work with a coach to get clear on who you are, what you want to work on, what it will take to work on it, and be held accountable along the way.  You can also work with advocates, managers, peers, colleagues, mentors to let them know that you are actively focusing on this one thing.  If they have tips or suggestions and can be mindful of sharing feedback when they see you doing the behavior, you can gain their support for your growth.  Receiving helpful feedback from them can allow you to adjust along the way.

Expressing your executive presence is unique to each person.  You make an impression through the values you bring to the organization, the results you deliver, the way you connect, and how you communicate your points.  It is a worthy skill to invest in because it can lead to more career advancements and opportunities.  When you lead with character, substance, and style, you can positively influence and inspire greatness in others. 

Quote of the day: “How you act (gravitas), how you speak (communication), and how you look (appearance) count for a lot in determining your leadership presence.” -CEO Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Q: How do you define executive presence?  What’s one essential feature of it?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to help develop their executive and leadership presence, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you show up? Is it the way you want to?

How to Fire the Humane Way (Firing Series 3/3)

The prospect of firing someone you’ve worked with for years can be daunting, but you have decided that it is the last step in what was a fair and transparent process where all other options failed.  You are left with the best choice to elevate your team’s needs over any one individual.

How do you have the termination talk?  Here are some steps to consider: 

1. Check with Human Resources.  Before you schedule the conversation, Management Consultant Dick Grote suggests sharing your plans with human resources to see if there are any additional considerations.  They can offer a fuller picture of the employee’s extenuating circumstances.  Maybe their pension vests on Wednesday, so firing on Tuesday can be suspect, or you find out that their wife is starting cancer treatments, so firing on the same day can especially sting.  HR should tell you if you have all the proper documentation and if there are other things you need to do to go about the process fairly and professionally.  They can answer any questions you might have.  Since you know the situation best, if you think it would be helpful for an HR rep to attend the meeting to help with questions or unusual reactions, you can make that call, but it should be done in the spirit of support and not a show of force.

2. Don’t delay.  This is one of the hardest things you might have to do as a manager, but you must not let your agony delay the conversation.  Prolonging their employment when they do not gel properly with the core values and culture is unfair to them and can be very expensive and damaging to the company.  When you choose not to fire someone, it ruins the integrity of the organization.  “Managers rarely regret acting too quickly on a termination, but they have regretted waiting too long,” says Grote.  If you’re still having trouble mustering the courage to act, think about your team, which may be picking up that extra slack and working longer hours to cover the poor performance.  Once the decision has been made to pull the plug, do not wallow in the misguided hope that somehow things may still work out. They hardly do. Grote says, “Remember: It’s not the people you fire who make your life miserable. It’s the ones you don’t.”

3. Choose your timing.  Doing it early in the day and week may encourage them to find another job and reduce the chances that they will spend the weekend moping in a black hole.  Choosing Friday after­noon, on the other hand, often creates the minimum amount of disruption to the rest of the staff.    Whatever you decide, make it logical and compassionate for those involved.

4. Do it in person.  It should come from the manager, a familiar face who had previous conversations about the potential ramifications if things did not change so there is no surprise.  It should go without saying, but do not send an email or text.  If the person is in a different city or working remotely and cannot do it in person, a video call can suffice.

5. Be clear and concise. The words you use to terminate a team member should be simple and to the point.  There is no reason to sugarcoat a termination; take the rip-the-band-aid off approach by skipping the excessive small talk and leading with the headline.  Consultant Jodi Glickman suggests beginning by saying, “I have some bad news.  Today is your last day here.” Then be transparent and state the reason for termination in one or two simple sentences.  “We’ve let you go because you didn’t meet your sales targets” or “You’ve not been a good cultural fit, e.g., missing deadlines in a fast-moving culture.” Then, tell them directly they are terminated.  It’s essential to use the past tense because it “precludes arguments about second chances,” says Grote. “The plug has been pulled.”  You can also say, “Last month’s report indicated that your department still has the lowest quality index. We have decided that a change must be made, and as of today, your employment has been terminated.”  It is important not to waffle or be ambiguous because being clear is kind.  While both examples point to termination happening immediately, I think it is always helpful to give the person enough notice to transition.

6. Be compassionate.  When you have decided the right thing to do is dismiss a team member, you want to make the dreaded process go as smoothly as possible, both for you and the person you are letting go.  

Dick Grote says, “Even when the business justification is clear, you’re sitting down and telling someone that [they] are no longer getting a paycheck and that when [they] wake up in the morning, [they] have no place to go. That’s tough.”  Very few people are eager to put themselves in situations of discomfort as keeping somebody accountable does not feel good, but it is an eventual gift.  If you feel guilty, you should know that you are keeping them from another job where they can be happier and thrive.  Thinking about how uncomfortable you are in having the conversation is selfish, you must keep in mind what’s best for the company, the teammates moving forward, and the ones being terminated.

Be sure to have the conversation in a humane and dignified way by doing it behind closed doors.   It is essential always to be respectful and compassionate not only because it is the right thing to do but also because it helps with morale.  John Stieger, CMO of Wilke Global “Anyone with empathy can at least understand how losing a job will impact a spouse, children, and others who are blameless,” he says.  How you treat people on their way out the door does not go unnoticed by the rest of the organization.”  When terminations are well justified and professionally executed, the rest of the workgroup realizes that this is an excellent place to work.   

7. Stay in the room and be prepared to answer questions.  While some experts contend that you do not need to say anything more or even remain in the room after the initial pronouncement, Grote vehemently disagrees. “Leadership demands compassion,” he says. “You were the agent of a terrible thing that has just happened in this person’s life.  Don’t run away, and don’t force HR to pick up the pieces.  You should be prepared to speak as needed and answer questions as they come up.”

 Before the meeting, you need to be well versed on practical matters or allow HR to handle questions relating to the last day of work, the last paycheck, the details of the severance agreement, the process of collecting unemployment benefits and health insurance, and what happens to their benefits and unused vacation time.  Of course, there may be issues you and HR have not considered.  In that case, you can let them know that you will get back to them shortly once you have the answer.  They should know the next steps.

8. Be prepared for emotion but keep yours in check.  Some people take the news in stride, while others might go through various emotions such as shock, grief, and anger.  Be prepared to listen and support in the best way you can.

9. Offer additional support if you would like.  If you genuinely believe the person has talent that could be useful elsewhere and are being let go for non-ethical or performance issues, offer to help with their transition so it is as seamless as possible.  Can you give them a long lead time to find a new job?  Can you assign them a Career/Transition Coach to support their next steps of polishing their resume and getting clarity on their next position?  Would you be willing to serve as a reference or write a testimonial?  How about making a LinkedIn introduction to a team where you think they would be valued?  Can you reassure them that the lines of communication will be open and that they can contact you for support?

10. Conduct an exit interview.  Exit interviews are a way for employees to be heard and state their case for why they are leaving.  They can offer valuable feedback on improvements since they may not hold back with their candid remarks, and you can use that information to plug any holes for improvement.  When possible, you should share their contributions and how they positively impacted the organization to feel proud of the time they spent.  Not all firings will be as amicable, but no need to burn bridges, ending on a high note is always the way to go.  Be sure to thank the person for their service and wish them well.

11. Talk to your team & focus on the future.  Gathering the colleagues affected by the termination to address the matter and offer a straightforward message, no need to reveal the reasons behind the decision due to confidentiality, but if it is probable that your team already knows.  The firing likely presents short-term challenges for your team so ensure them how it will be much better in the long run.  Share your strategy on managing the workload while you look for a replacement and are open to their suggestions to minimize the impact on them and the business.   

Deciding to fire is never an easy option but you should not delay just because it is uncomfortable for you.  That would be selfish and unfair to the person who is not a right fit because you keep them from moving on to better things.  It is also not fair to the other team members who may be overworking to compensate or to the organization if the business needs are being overlooked.  There is a way to fire with compassion, choose it and you will sleep better.

Quote of the day: “The day that firing becomes easy is the day to fire yourself.” -Tom Peters

Q:  What’s your best tip for successfully firing somebody with compassion?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to think through compassionate plans to dismiss their employees when they must, contact me to learn more.

Using compassion in saying goodbye

Choose to Double Down on Support (Firing Series 2/3)

Deciding to fire can be a tough choice.  In the last blog, we explored the reasons to let an employee go, this blog will focus on another option, which is to support your teammate rather than letting them go. 

Reasons to support:

If an employee is not working out, instead of rushing to release that individual, you may want to closely examine the reasons.  Choosing to support somebody by providing guidance for improvement, switching roles to better match their skillset with the work requirements, or changing teams could be the better decision.

Here are some common reasons why you would choose to support:

1. You were unclear in the hiring process.  If you did not articulate the job requirements and if you did not train the person adequately in the onboarding process where they are set up for success and feel safe to contribute fully, you should not let them go because you are responsible for the mismatch.  You should give the person adequate training so they can win at their job.  This happens often because we are usually rushed to fill a position and choose to throw them into the fire with insufficient training. 

2. Realignments and changing business needs.  If the business has changed and you need people to do other jobs than what they were doing or if you had a realignment and created a skillset redundancy, you may want to move them to another team where they would be able to contribute and thrive.  Quality employees with a fierce skillset and a learning mindset can be versatile enough to be plugged in elsewhere to positively impact; they are people you want around.   

3. You haven’t managed them well.  Part of the success of an employee can be attributed to how well they were supported.  Have you had regular meetings with your direct reports to learn what the person needs to succeed?  Did you set clear goals and expectations measurable with benchmarks, deadlines, and a general timeline for completion?  Have you had 1:1 performance discussions where they are aware of their gaps, and you have created an opportunity to invite their feedback to co-create an improvement plan with outcomes you are both comfortable with?  Have you had career development conversations where you understand their short and long-term motivations and dreams and how they fit into their daily tasks while offering opportunities for support, growth, and development?  Generally, have you be a present thought partner enabling their best efforts and clearing the path for their great work?

If you had a conversation about their struggles, do they know exactly what to do to improve and how their progress will be measured?  Are they aware of the timeframe and consequences if they break the mutual agreement and no improvement is made?  Making sure you have done everything possible to support the person matters.  If they still have not responded well to your assistance, it could be time to let the person go.

4. You have not kept them engaged or focused on their wellbeing.  If an employee is underperforming, it could be because they are burned out.  They were given more work than exceeded any normal human’s capacity, so they shut down, and so did their productivity.  They could also be dissatisfied with their job if they have been in the same role for a long time and they have not been offered growth opportunities, they could be showing signs of dissatisfaction and frustration by not being challenged by the work.  They can also feel resentful that all their time will work and they do not feel supported in having time off.  Before Thanksgiving of 2014, President Joe Biden sent a memo to his staff reminding them that he did not expect nor want anyone to “miss or sacrifice important family obligations for work.”  That includes celebrations, such as birthdays, anniversaries, or weddings, and time needed to step away from work due to an illness or death in the family.  For Biden, it was an unwritten rule for staff to take time off for family responsibilities or wellbeing.  Workplace cultures where there are no boundaries between professional and personal and being on call 24 hours a day is not conducive to bringing out people’s best, even if it may seem so in the short term.  Rewarding overwork can be detrimental.

If you have determined that you did not offer the proper support in the hiring and managing stage or if the business needs have changed, there are still things you can do to support your people.  You can move them laterally to another team or another department to thrive and be happier somewhere else in the company.  Perhaps, they have been in sales for many years, and an opportunity in marketing would be a breath of fresh air.  Or maybe they're in tech or operations and would enjoy a career pivot to manage people because that is what gives them joy.  Separate the person from the job; if they are great, where else can they go?  Around 2010, Salesforce wondered how it can be just as easy to transfer within the company as it was to leave so they created their Opportunity Open Market initiative.  After each quarterly release, software developers could transfer teams.  There would be internal job fairs to facilitate that transfer.  It allowed people to find what motivated them and work on things that challenged and excited them.  It was so successful it was integrated into the broader company. 

5. Your company decided to downsize.  If the company is going through a tough time and you must make layoffs, what are all your options?  The worst thing about layoffs is not only what you do to the people who leave but what you do to the people who stay because if they are expected to double their work, they end up losing trust and getting frustrated.  Is it possible to do furloughs instead?  Would anybody on the team volunteer for some time off because they are in a more comfortable position and wish to spend more time with their family?  Can you agree on a temporary promotion freeze if it means your people can stay?  Every team and culture are different; choose what works best for the group.  In 2008, Barry-Wehmiller got hit hard with the recession, so the board put pressure on the CEO Bob Chapman to make layoffs, but he believed in committing to people like family.  Instead of firing, he had each person take a four-week furlough of unpaid vacation whenever they wanted because he thought it was better for all to hurt a little than some to suffer a lot with a job loss.  As a result, morale went up because people saw leaders sacrificing the numbers for them, so they started to care for each other even more.  They would give their days to those who could not afford furlough.

Deciding to let a team member go is a big choice.  Before pulling the trigger, you want to understand the reasons for doing it and whether they are valid.  If the fault lies with you, you should give your people another chance.  If you have genuinely done everything you can, but they still show no improvement, do not waste one more minute.

Quote of the day: “On what high-performing companies should be striving to create: A great place for great people to do great work.” - Marilyn Carlson, former CEO of Carlson Companies

[The next blog in this firing series 3/3 will focus on the best ways to go about firing]

As a Leadership Coach, I partner with leaders to support their teams to do their best work, contact me to learn more.

How can you partner with your direct report for success?