Conscious Leadership

Habits to Break for Successful Executives

2010-09-09T14:27:50-07:00

The other day, a colleague of mine (a seasoned management consultant but new to coaching executives) asked me for advice in working with a challenging client. Before offering my counsel, I pulled one of my favorite books off the shelf, What Got You Here Won't Get You There by corporate America's preeminent executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, flipped it open, and quickly ran through the titles of the 20 habits Goldsmith says senior executives need to break. A minute or so later I asked my colleague if that sounded like his client. His jaw dropped open and he said it sounded like his client's biography. I smiled. For more years that I can count I said, our CEO, Philip Moore has articulated pretty much the same or similar behaviors that Goldsmith succinctly outlines in his book - they appear to be a universal pattern with successful executives.

Here are those 20 habits that Goldsmith says executives need to break:

Winning too much.
Adding too much value.
Passing judgment.
Making destructive comments.
Starting with "No," "But," or "However."
Telling the world how smart we are.
Speaking when angry.
Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work."
Withholding information.
Failing to give proper recognition.
Claiming credit that we don't deserve.
Making excuses.
Clinging to the past.
Playing favorites.
Refusing to express regret.
Not listening.
Failing to express gratitude.
Punishing the messenger.
Passing the buck.
An excessive need to be "me."

If just one of these traits is keeping you from getting the results you want, buy this book - it's a winner. He explains each bad habit in depth, and the second half of the book gives great advice on what to do about it.

Make Your Next Executive Retreat a Powerful Vehicle for Change

2010-06-30T18:25:14-07:00

Planned, designed, and facilitated well, an offsite executive retreat can be a powerful vehicle for addressing the challenges of change and transition within your organization. For more than a decade Moore & Associates has delivered customized retreats, offsites, and intensives for senior management teams that enhance team member awareness regarding its effectiveness (past and present), revealing the gap between current performance and where the team needs or wants to be, and preparing the team to lead change in their organization.

Within the retreat, this new collective understanding becomes the catalyst among team members to take the steps to make the changes necessary to develop the level of effectiveness needed to meet future demands of the organization.

We're often retained by clients who have had a few offsites to work on strategy, mission, vision, major goals, etc., and are frustrated that those important initiatives lose steam or never gain traction when the leaders get back to the office. To address this dilemma and help our clients achieve change that sticks, we partner closely with them to deliver retreats whose objectives explicitly include:

Enhance better communication, trust, and understanding among team members, and
Proactive surfacing and facilitation of conflict, clearing the air so focus on the "business of the business" of the organization is constructive, creative, and productive.

Clients tell us our coaching and facilitation skills that make the greatest contribution to their post-retreat success in implementing positive change include:

Help our clients significantly increase awareness about their team's dynamics
Create an environment in which to talk about difficult issues that need addressing that the team until now has not been able to deal with in a constructive way
Provide a framework for the team to assess its working relationship, functionality, and effectiveness past, present, and future
Teach what it really takes to make positive and sustainable change personally, as a team, and organizationally
Coach the team on why role, communication, and style differences are usually tremendous challenges but understandable, and can be turned into the team's greatest assets by taking advantage of diversity and differences
Make value judgments that focus discussion of the business agenda items, work plans, and priorities that result in commitment, decisions, and next step action items
The use of allegories, symbols, humor, and storytelling to teach organization development, change management, group psychodynamics, conflict management, and leadership performance
Encourage active participation by all team members.

When done right, your next executive retreat can strengthen your leadership team in numerous ways - and just possibly make the team itself a powerful vehicle for change!

Avoiding Mistakes in Managing Crisis Change

2010-04-12T16:06:40-07:00

For anybody leading change in their organization, here's a blog post well worth reading by Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter: 13 Unlucky Mistakes in Managing Traumatic Change - and How to Avoid Them.

She lists 13 common mistakes made when leading change in a crisis, and some useful guidelines for avoiding them. Kanter notes that these actions are common during "traumatic" change; we'd argue that they are business-as-usual actions today in many private and most public sector organizations.

Our experience shows that executives who master leading strategic change while managing through the immediate crisis can avoid the traps Kanter outlines:

Pressure to act quickly undermines values and culture.
Management exercises too much control.
Urgent tasks divert leaders' attention from the mood of the organization.
Communication is haphazard, erratic and uneven.
Uncertainty creates anxiety.
Employees hear it from the media first.
There is no outlet for emotions.
Key stakeholders are neglected.
It seems easier to cut than redeploy.
Casualties dominate attention.
Changes are expedient, not strategic.
Leaders lose credibility.
Gloom and doom fill the air.

Performance Management: The Right Thing for Leaders To Do

2010-04-02T16:49:09-07:00

Ironically, after a downsizing or restructuring, or navigating difficult economic conditions, the tendency for leaders is to not manage performance better. In actuality, with fear, uncertainty, and low trust running rampant in many organizations, implementing a robust performance management process is not only good business, it's the humane thing to do for staff at all levels. Here's why:

People want to know how they can contribute to the success of the organization - for their own job security and stability, sure, but also genuinely wanting their company to do well. Leaders have everyone's attention right now in this economy - so tell people what you need from them and why, coach them to get there, and eliminate obstacles in their way.
Performance management simply helps everyone do better by focusing attention on specific goals and behaviors. And who doesn't want to know the "rules of the game" where they work?
Paradoxically, it's a company's best people who most want their performance managed, measured, and rewarded. Winners lose morale when there are no consequences for sub-par performance. These folks will be the first to leave when the job market turns around.
In this economy, can anyone argue that individual, team, and overall organizational performance doesn't matter, or that there shouldn't be consequences for poor performance? (regardless of your politics, the uproar over bank bailouts, Wall Street pay, health care reform, and government budget deficits indicate a new-found interest in accountability for performance).
Uncertainty breeds doubt and a lack of confidence and trust. Employees want more control over their destiny. Seeing how their work contributes to the company's bottom or top line gives them that control. Tell people what they need to do to be successful. Give employees real power to innovate. Have meaningful and actionable conversations about what win/win performance looks like (for employees and for the organization).
Performance management is a critical component of a talent management strategy that will ensure a pipeline of people in the right jobs, doing work that matters.

Engage your people today and determine together what performance matters in your organization, and which behaviors, attitudes, and actions will drive those specific results. Make clear how everyone can and will contribute. Then help them be successful. Because when it comes to managing performance at all levels, the status quo is no longer an option. Besides, as a leader, managing performance is just about the most humane thing you can do right now.

Self-Awareness: The Antidote for Flaws that Derail Leaders

2010-03-11T15:10:51-08:00

Poor leadership in good times can be hidden, but poor leadership in bad times is a recipe for disaster say Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman in their research of 360-degree feedback data on more than 11,000 leaders in Fortune 500 companies. The researchers identified the 10 most common leadership shortcomings. The worst leaders:

Lack energy and enthusiasm
Accept their own mediocre performance
Lack clear vision and direction
Have poor judgment
Don't collaborate
Don't walk the talk
Resist new ideas
Don't learn from mistakes
Lack interpersonal skills
Fail to develop others

The majority of people in the study were surprised by their negative results. In our work with executives, we see everyday that most hard-working and well-intentioned people believe they are doing the right thing or they wouldn't be doing it! Human beings consistently think they are better than they are - a phenomenon referred to in psychology as "self-serving bias." Most people have an optimism regarding their own behavior.

Thus at Moore & Associates we believe self-awareness is the essential quality of leadership. Leadership development and coaching targeted to understanding oneself better (strengths and unique gifts, weaknesses, stresses, unconscious motives, etc.) are critical for success. As an executive, the more you learn about yourself, the more range you have to:

Take action in new ways to deliver results in your unique role and organization.
Increase your empathic abilities and understand what drives and motivates others.
Attract and retain a diverse team whose whole becomes greater than the individual players.

The barrier to self-awareness? Self-deception of course. It's impossible to see ourselves objectively. Which is why great executive coaching is invaluable.

Making Progress is What Employees Really Want

2010-03-07T16:12:33-08:00

What happens on a "great" workday? It's not recognition, incentives, or even doing work that is deemed "important". A great day at work is making progress, according to a just completed multi-year study tracking the day-to-day activities, emotions, and motivational levels of hundreds of knowledge workers by Harvard professor Teresa A. Amabile and independent researcher Steven J. Kramer.

The study found that on days when workers have the sense they're making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they're spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest. Our experience is that this is true regardless of industry, sector, size of organization, or staff level - from senior managers to line workers.

This should be welcome news for leaders and managers because the key to motivation turns out to be largely within your control - the power to influence events that either facilitate or undermine progress. You can provide meaningful goals, encouragement, resources, and protect people from irrelevant demands. Further advice from the study includes:

Avoid impeding your team's progress by:

changing goals autocratically
being indecisive
holding up resources

Pave the way for your employees' daily progress by:

taking great care to clarify overall goals
ensuring peoples' efforts are properly supported
refraining from exerting time pressure so intense that minor glitches are perceived as crises rather than learning opportunities
creating a culture of helpfulness
celebrating progress, even the incremental sort.

CEO Succession: An Ongoing Process Starting with Your Strategy

2010-02-23T17:39:58-08:00

What do corporations, government agencies, and nonprofits have in common? They all struggle to handle well the succession of their top person. Why is this? A myriad of reasons, but a few that we see repeatedly are echoed in a good article by Ana Dutra and Joseph E. Griesedieck, Planning for Your Next CEO: It's High Time for Boards to Get Succession Planning Right.

The authors are right on in their observation that CEO succession all too often becomes at best an exercise in damage control and at worst an unseemly scramble that can hurt a company, shareholder value, and public perception.

So why doesn't succession planning get the "planning" it deserves? According to the authors' research, for CEOs, spotting the talent that will eventually replace them can be an unwelcome intimation of executive mortality. For boards, bringing up succession can feel awkward when things are going well - when they're not - it can feel like a threat.

A few of the solutions include:

When CEO succession is a regular, structured process that forms part of the board's agenda it becomes a matter of routine, as normal of a discussion as the annual compensation review.
Boards should view CEO succession as a strategic process intimately related to the organization's performance.
Begin planning for CEO succession the day a new CEO starts. While internal candidates aren't always eager to be compared and benchmarked, as long as it's done in a consistent manner, they'll view it as part of their own career development plans.

Organizations with a fair, objective, and transparent CEO succession process will find it easier not only to attract and retain top talent, but to execute strategy which is the key point: consideration of any candidate should start with unanimous board agreement around the corporate strategy. For example, if a company is looking to do significant acquisitions as a part of its strategy, it would require a CEO who is a great communicator and skilled at culture integration. But if the company is planning to focus on its core business, a CEO candidate with extensive industry and operational experience may be best.

In our management consulting work, regardless of the change initiative the client is undertaking, to gain traction and deliver results, successful change starts with alignment around the organization's strategy. Never pass up an opportunity to test for agreement on strategy (or strategy execution) with your top people. Discussion about CEO succession is a perfect catalyst for discovering (and doing something about) disagreement within the board or leadership ranks around the strategy and how to execute it.

A Word About Teams

2010-01-13T18:14:11-08:00

Effective teams are a crucial element of high-performing organizations. We’ve had a run on consulting requests from clients that have team building or team development as a part of the work so we thought it would be helpful in this blog entry to highlight a few of the commonsense findings from one of our favorite team resources; “The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization” by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith:

A demanding performance challenge tends to create a team. The hunger for performance is far more important to team success than team-building exercises, special incentives, or team leaders with ideal profiles. In fact, teams often form around such challenges without any help from management. Conversely, potential teams without such challenges usually fail to become teams.

The disciplined application of “team basics” is often overlooked. Team basics include size, purpose, goals, skills, approach, and accountability. Paying rigorous attention to these is what creates the conditions necessary for team performance. A deficiency in any of these basics will derail the team, yet most potential teams inadvertently ignore one or more of them.

Team performance opportunities exist in all parts of an organization. Team basics apply to many different groups, including teams that recommend things (i.e., task forces), teams that make or do things (i.e., production teams, sales teams), and teams that run things (i.e., management teams at various levels). Most organizations recognize team opportunities in only one or two of these categories, leaving a lot of team performance potential untapped.

Teams at the top are the most difficult. The complexities of long-term challenges, heavy demands on executive time, and ingrained individualism of senior people conspire against teams at the top. As a result there are fewer real teams at the top of large organizations.

Most organizations intrinsically prefer individual over group (team) accountability. Job descriptions, compensation schemes, career paths, and performance evaluations focus on individuals. Our culture emphasizes individual accomplishments and makes us uncomfortable trusting our career aspirations to outcomes depending on the performance of others. “If you want to get something done right, do it yourself” is a common belief. Even the thought of shifting emphasis from individual accountability to team accountability makes most people uneasy.

Accelerating Corporate Transformations

2010-01-04T15:54:39-08:00

Six mistakes can derail your company's attempts to change, according to the spotlight article in the January-February 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review: "Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don't Lose Your Nerve!)" by Robert H. Miles. Here are the six problems that can slow your corporate transformation to a crawl (the author suggests you attack them sequentially):

Cautious management culture. Compel all executives to confront reality and agree on ground rules for working together.
Business-as-usual management process. Run a no-slack launch on a parallel track with regular systems; make sure there are early, visible victories.
Initiative gridlock. Limit the company to three or four initiatives.
Recalcitrant executives. Compress launch to quickly engage key executives and to identify those not on board.
Disengaged employees. Rapidly cascade the changes to all employees to boost engagement.
Loss of focus during execution. Anticipate and defuse postlaunch blues, midcourse overconfidence, and the presumption of perpetual motion.

This is an excellent article for any executive or senior team planning to launch major organizational change or transformation and we highly recommend it. We do however have a different take on a key point of the article - that transformation launches must be "bold and rapid". The article opens with the author's reflection on 25 years of research and working with CEOs responsible for transformations. The common CEO lament is "we should have - and could have - moved faster. Such executives have a long list of regrets: They wish they had unified the leadership team right away. They wish they had engaged employees sooner, and quickly drummed up support for the new vision. They wished they hadn't waited so long to test their assumptions and refine their key initiaitves..."

Is anyone asking the question - why the delay in each of these areas? After all, we're talking about highly successful CEOs and executive teams here. Hint: it might have something to to do with the order of 6 mistakes above - certain ones are far more critical than others, more difficult to address, and easier to avoid. And they can't be solved with boldness, speed, and "rapid all employee cascades"...

Self-Reflect Before Leading Change in the New Year

2009-12-28T18:27:03-08:00

Leadership matters. And as W. Warner Burke says, "Leadership is personal. The process concerns the use of self, how to be persuasive, how to deal with resistance, and how to be political, in the best sense of the phrase: how to embody the vision of where one wants the organization to go. It is important, therefore, for the leader who is about to begin a significant change effort to take some time at the outset to reflect."

Burke has useful suggestions for leadership reflection in three categories: self-awareness, motives and values. Here are some of his ideas for "self-awareness" in preparation for leading large-scale change or transformation:

There is growing evidence that self-awareness is related to performance; that is, high performers tend to have a greater overlap between how they see themselves and how others see them than do moderate and low performers. It behooves leaders who want to bring about a successful change effort to be as cognizant as possible about themselves in personal domains such as the following:

Tolerance for ambiguity: The courses that organization change will take are not exactly predictable; being able to live with this kind of ambiguity is important.
Need for control: It is difficult to be a "control freak" and lead change effectively. Organization change is messy, sometimes chaotic, and seemingly out of control; thus being clear about what you can control and need to control and what you're not likely to be able to control is critical.
Understanding how feelings affect behavior: What is your typical reaction when others disagree or challenge or resist the change that you, as a leader, feel strongly about? Knowing yourself in these ways help you to manage yourself more effectively, especially in trying circumstances.
Personal dispositions: Most people know whether their preference is extroversion or introversion, but what about other dimensions, such as the need for closure and intuition compared with sensing? (These are components of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based on Carl Jung's personality theory). There is some evidence, for example, that intuition (trusting one's hunches, future orientation, and conceptual tendency) is more related to leader behaviors than is sensing (being fact-based, concrete, and practical).
Decision making: It is highly valuable to understand the differences between times when as a leader you need to take the reins and decide, and times when you need to loosen control and involve others as a part of self-knowledge.

Our experience is that successful major change or transformation takes both leadership skills (visionary, persuasive communication, tolerance for ambiguity, ability to share power and control, etc.) and management skills (practical, concrete thinking, need to control, etc.) - i.e., leaders who can manage the "status quo" to make sure the trains run on time so to speak, while letting those with true change leadership abilities lead the change.

Cultivating individual (and collective executive team) self-awareness is a key ingredient for making major organization change work. It's all about positioning yourself and your players: with self-awareness, the best leaders properly position each executive in whichever camp best plays to individual and team strengths, mitigating weaknesses so the organization wins.