“He isn’t an angry person. He means well. It’s just that he’s often sharp with people. And sometimes they take it the wrong way. He’s really a good worker. I’ve told him that people can be intimidated by him, so he knows he sometimes comes across this way.”

But does he really know this? He may acknowledge it in his head but does he recognize it when he is being curt, or better yet, just before he is about to be curt?

All of us, in one way or another, go around on auto-pilot. Certain behaviors we have been doing so long and the neural pathways for them in our brains are carved so deep that we don’t see it. Even if we are looking for it, it’s hard to see in ourselves. So, how do you begin to get an employee who is on auto-pilot to change a behavior that is no longer serving him (or the team) well?

Answer: you help him develop real time awareness by…

• giving him feedback that he behaves this way and how it is damaging his effectiveness
• pointing it out in real time when he does it in your presence (First, get his OK to point it out. In other words to be a mirror for him.)
• watching him in interaction with others and, afterward, letting him know what you observed
• debriefing with him about the reaction of others when he does it with them (What did he notice in them? How does he feel about getting that response? What could he have done differently?)

© 2012, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

If you look at the circle itself, you will see Reactive structure of mind represented by the lower half of the circle and Creative structure by the upper half.

When leaders operate from the Reactive mind-set they are, of course, able to achieve at least some level of results through their people. The problem is that, as research shows, at some point they hit a ceiling. The behavior that comes with Reactive habits of thought is unable to generate higher performance.

When a manager develops a more Creative set of beliefs and assumptions (mental “operating system”), a hole is blasted in that ceiling and he/she is capable of leading people to significantly greater accomplishments.

In the following video Bob Anderson, Founder of The Leadership Circle and somewhat of a mentor for me, explains the how these dynamics operate in the heads of managers. The 18 minutes of viewing time you invest here will be well worth it.

© 2012, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

How you choose to deliver feedback on an employee’s performance will have a huge impact on how he/she responds to your message…acceptance, in the spirit of learning, denial, as a victim, or angry counter attack.

How you present to employees a change mandated by you or by upper management will guide whether they come around willingly, begrudgingly, or not at all.

© 2012, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

We can be:

1. an expert resource who provides information or steps in and solves the problem,
2. more like a doctor who prescribes a solution for the client to follow,
3. or a process consultant who works to get the client to come up with a solution.

The first two approaches are similar and I find they all too frequently represent the default response of managers when asked for help from their employees. Often it is for advice around a technical problem relating to work (e.g. how to go about solving a large machine’s breakdown). More often than not the more experienced boss has a good answer. The problem is that responses #1 & 2 build dependency on the boss and leave the employee feeling “one down,” lower in status to the manager. This mostly happens at a subconscious level. The lectured employee doesn’t consciously think, “Oh what a show off. I feel stupid having him give me the answer.”

When I am coaching a client, I have to be continuously mindful of the temptation to switch too soon from a process consultant role to just telling my client what to do. And when I push my advice or solution, unless my client is truly stuck, I receive back a shot of resentment and resistance from him (her).

My unwelcome advice makes her feel a tad inferior. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t like that feeling. Not a good mindset for your employee to be in if your goal is to help her learn and grow in knowledge, skill, and self-reliance.

© 2012, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

If you are serious about growing your leadership potential, these are all excellent ideas.

A mentor is like a scalpel, someone with whom you can address specific questions and problems you face.

What George calls a “leadership development group” provides you with an ongoing team of colleagues who will challenge you to risk and grow and hold your feet to the fire, all the while supporting you on your journey. (Note: Check out my Sept. 7/11 post, “Accelerate Your Growth with a Mastermind Group.”)

Civic and charitable organizations are always looking for people to volunteer for leadership roles on their board or on key initiatives. This is a great way to test your mettle at a higher level of responsibility than you may have in your current job. The learning you gain is totally transferrable to your career. Many municipalities and counties have community leadership organizations. For example, I have been active for years in Leadership Fairfax, Inc.

Travel, of course, forces you to deal with diversity and–if you opt to get around on your own, rather than through a charter tour company–function outside your comfort zone.

You don’t have to wait for your next promotion to grow your talents. How about making 2012 a year of continuous personal leadership development going on in the background.

© 2012, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

People come up with all kinds of descriptors and behaviors of both bosses. But one thing emerges about the best boss ever (BBE). He or she is someone you want to work for…and keep working for.

Furthermore, a BBE is almost always someone that others in the organization would like to work for too. When an internal posting for a position in this manager’s department opens up, many people apply. They know that he/she will inspire them, give them opportunities to do their best work, encourage them, challenge them, and develop them. And that BBE doesn’t take himself/herself too seriously; there’s a refreshing humility present here.

BBE’s are “talent magnets.” I really like that term. I love the visual image of their drawing excellence to them and then of the synergy that results when all that talent starts working together.

But these “best bosses ever” don’t just aggregate talented employees. They nurture and grow the capacity and potential of their people. And, more than is the case with average managers, their people move on and up in the organization to new and greater contributions to the enterprise’s success. In other words, with the most talented employees, a form of reverse polarity at some point takes place.

Alas, methinks I stretch the magnet metaphor a bit too far.

© 2012, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

Someone with a Fixed mindset believes they can’t get any better, improve their skills, or turn around a failure. Growth mindset people believe the opposite. Therefore, they are much more open to feedback, to learning from their mistakes, and trying out new ways and behaviors.

Here’s what is particularly interesting, from the research. When parents praise their kids for their intelligence when they do well, it tends to breed young adults who operate with a fixed mindset. What fosters a growth mindset is praising the process their kids use to achieve a positive result. In other words, how they took on a difficult challenge or used a different approach or persisted in the face of discouragement.

Do you see an parallel in giving feedback to an employee? It suggests to me that a way to crack an employee’s fixed mindset or reinforce his/her growth mindset is to draw attention to his/her methodology or behavior behind a positive result. You could say something like…

“Wow, that mistake is interesting. What can you do now to turn it around? What did you learn from it? What will you do differently if this sort of situation comes up again?”

When you praise traits and competencies linked to their performance results it feels final, immutable, WYSIWYG . Processes, however, are almost always capable of being improved. By focusing your positive feedback on your staff member’s approach, strategy or methodology, vs. their traits like creativity, sense of humor, or intelligence, you keep open the potential for yet further growth.

Hey, life (and work) is a process, no?

© 2011, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

• Business results were 21% higher in enterprises where senior leaders very frequently make an effort to coach others.
• This increased when organizations had a culture that supports coaching and makes managers accountable for engaging in it.
• Despite this, only 11% of senior leaders are “true believers” in the value of coaching and having their managers coach.
• Furthermore, most managers need to be trained on how to coach, with special emphasis on using open-ended questions, listening actively, and reinforcing positive behavior

In our management training workshops around effective performance & motivation conversations, we are increasingly emphasizing coaching type skills. Compared to the traditional performance appraisal where the conversation tends to look back in time and play “gotcha” around what was “wrong,” coaching looks forward. It emphasizes building on the employee’s strengths and accomplishments, and it identifies the particular behavior that is needed instead of current behavior that is producing performance shortfalls.

It makes business sense for an organization to deliberately foster a culture where managers are trained in coaching skills and are expected to use them in conversations around performance, both during the year and in the final review discussion. Such a culture requires visible and tangible support from the top and an HR department dedicated to making it a reality.

This isn’t an overnight fix and a few managers will not be able to master even the basic skills of coaching. But it is the smart way to go.

© 2011, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

“Raised through a childhood in which each new year brought novel opportunities, playing at ever more difficult levels of sports, growing physically, educated in a system of cleanly delineated grades — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior — many employees find themselves several years into their career wondering what happened to the momentum they used to enjoy. Being both conditioned and naturally wired to look forward to differences between seventh and eighth grade or high school and college, many workers are disappointed to discover there will be no dramatic difference between their experience as a 25-year-old employee and their experience as a 26-year-old employee.”

The full article talks about the plethora of studies that show what a powerful motivator is personal and professional growth, learning, and rising to a tough-but-attainable challenge.

So many people, in their jobs, no longer feel any sense of increasing their capacity and moving on to more challenging tasks. Each day is the same, each year essentially a clone of the last one. Clearly, one cause of this is structural. Some jobs, especially in manufacturing and straight forward service functions, are repetitive and have had any meaningful discretion engineered out of them.

But, in the vast number of jobs, this is not the case. Here it is incumbent upon managers to periodically ask what their employees have learned and how they have grown over the last year. Better still, however, let’s get out in front of the curve. At least once a year–perhaps at performance review time–ask each of your staff members,

“What do would like to learn/know/be able to do 12 months from today that you don’t know or can’t do today?”

I believe the best bosses are catalysts for the never-ending growth of every employee in their charge.

© 2011, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.

A recent WSJ article shares what some firms, especially the larger professional consulting firms, are doing to maintain a former employee “alumni network.” These can be elaborate initiatives involving message boards, news/blogs from your organization, jobs you post externally, features on former employee alumni, and even social gatherings.

The main benefits of this strategy are to:

• recruit former employees
• get referrals from them for other potential job candidates
• generate business with their new employer

You don’t have to get that elaborate or invest a lot in a fancy alumni network. But I think it would be wise to consider those individuals who have left over the past few years that would be worth getting–and keeping–in touch with and how you might do it.

© 2011, Ian Cook. All rights reserved.