David Rabiner's Blog

Tips for Setting Goals in 2012

2012-01-18T18:32:00.000-08:00

Just as Microsoft does with Windows, each year I attempt to upgrade myself. And, like Windows, some versions of my new self are better than others. I just finished programming Rabiner 2012 by setting my annual goals, and I thought I’d share the most important things I’ve learned over the years about this process.

1. Believe in the power of incremental gains.
Most people can't achieve everything they want overnight or even in one year. Progress takes time. Ideally, ten years from now they'll look back and see incremental gains. They may not have accomplished everything they set out to do, but they will be a whole lot closer to their big dreams than if they had not set goals. Without goals, growth is random. Believe in the power of incremental gains.

2. Focus on what you want.
Henry David Thoreau said, "In the long run, you only get what you aim for." This is the part of the process where you ask yourself, "What do I really want to achieve or become?"

3. Boil it down to two or three measurable goals for 2012.
Let's say, for example, that your dream for yourself is to live long and prosper. Your annual goals, then, might include one or two goals related to health and fitness and one or two goals related to professional achievement. When crafting them, make your goals measurable and keep them doable. A measurable health-related goal might look like this: Lose 10 pounds by December 31st. There's an important adage in business that says, "What gets measured gets done." The same is true for achieving personal goals.

4. Work back from there.
Now ask yourself, "What will I have to accomplish by the end of the third quarter, second quarter, and first quarter so I'm likely to meet my year-end goal?" To lose 10 pounds by December 31st, your quarterly goals might be: Lose 8 pounds by September 30th, lose 6 pounds by June 30th, and lose 3 pounds by March 31st. You now have a simple plan to follow: a measurable, doable goal with benchmark accomplishments throughout the year.

5. Stay focused.
Here’s the most important step in the goal-setting process. On the bottom of your annual plan, write this statement, "To achieve my goals this quarter, this is what I will do today." Print your plan, place it on your desk or some other place so you will see it every morning, and read it as you start your day.

This simple goal-setting process will keep you focused on what’s most important and will yield surprising results. Your 2012 version of yourself may not turn out perfect, but it will be an improvement over 2011. If you follow this process every year you will, through the power of incremental gains, get what you aim for in the long run.

Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous new year, and please keep me posted on your progress during 2012.

Leadership Development: How Fearless Are You?

2011-08-02T20:11:00.000-07:00

How important is fearlessness to leadership? Well, very. Think for a minute about our American history. Consider the colonization of the new world, the American Revolution, the end of slavery, women’s suffrage, space exploration, and the civil rights movement. These critical turning points in our history wouldn’t have happened without the leadership of people who were fearless in their thinking and in their actions.

Certainly, their ideas and visions for the future were not mainstream. Their dreams were dismissed as ridiculous or impossible and were often shared in whispers for fear of retaliation and repression. The individuals who held these ideas and visions, though, could not hold back. They were driven by some internal need to explore new frontiers, and they had an uncommon courage to follow that drive.

How fearless are you? How important is fearlessness to your leadership? Few of us will ever need the type of courage our American pioneers had. But, as leaders at work, at home, in our schools, in our communities, we need a level of fearlessness that will enable us to speak up, to assert our preferences and choices, to give voice to our visions or causes, and to take action when it may not be a popular thing to do. We need a level of fearlessness that will allow us to be vulnerable, to tell the truth about ourselves, to set boundaries, to hold others accountable, and in other ways define our character.

Fearlessness is not for everyone, but it is an important element of leadership. Real leaders are able to put themselves out there by having uncomfortable conversations, making tough decisions, or taking a dreaded course of action. They know they will likely meet resistance and they have a pretty high tolerance for rejection and failure.

If you are feeling stuck in your leadership role, ask yourself if you are acting with enough courage. If you are feeling overly concerned with safety, peace keeping, what others think, and attending to the needs of those most resistant to change, then it might be time take a more fearless approach.

A Lesson in Change Management: Getting Them On Board Your Bus

2011-06-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

I like to analogize organizational leadership with being a bus driver. For the moment, consider that management in your organization is asking you to buy into a change. It might be a fundamental change in direction, it might be an operational change, or it might be just a technology change. The change is a bus, and management (the bus driver) is asking you to get on.

When the bus pulls up, which of the following three factors will most compel you to get on board? Is it (1) the bus driver, (2) the destination, or (3) the journey? I’ve asked this question hundreds of times in leadership workshops, and I’ve kept a running tally over the years of the thousands of individual responses I’ve received. The results may surprise you. About 48% of those surveyed have chosen the bus driver, 33% chose the destination, and 19% chose the journey.

There's a valuable change management lesson here. The 19% – about one out of five – chose the journey because they enjoy change and are likely to take on any initiative with a sense of adventure. But the rest -- four out of five -- don’t love it and will need more to get them to buy in. They’ll need confidence in management and a clearly communicated, compelling vision of the destination. In fact, they will tolerate an uncomfortable trip if they are sold on the bus driver and the destination.

In my experience, too many managers focus their energy on the journey -- the management details that move the initiative from point A to point B -- and then are surprised at the level of apathy or resistance they encounter from employees.

Potential riders always read the destination sign at the top of the bus when it pulls up. If it says "NOT SURE" or "TRUST ME", employees are not likely to get on board. Even if you possess other great leadership qualities, you still need vision. I'll give you more on vision in a later post.

Think about a change you’re wanting employees to make. What's compelling them to get on board your bus? In what area -- your leadership presence, the vision you are pursuing, or how you will get there -- do you need to pay better attention?

A Teachable Moment With Lady Gaga

2011-03-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

I admit I'm not a fan of Lady Gaga’s music or performance style. However, she’s caught my attention recently for something other than just her music and costumes.

Her name keeps coming up in respected business journals and television news stories. For example, Forbes named the 24-year old Lady Gaga the 4th richest and most powerful entertainer in its most recent ranking. She was named the #1 most creative person in business in 2010 by FastCompany. Polaroid named Lady Gaga Creative Director of a specialty line of Polaroid Imaging products. Harvard Business Review has blogged about her social influence, and 60 Minutes recently did a segment on her.

Here’s what I’ve learned about her.

• She knows what she wants. Years ago before she was Lady Gaga, Stephanie Germanotta told friends she intended to become a superstar entertainer.

• She has a fierce passion for her work, saying that her passion for her work is "so strong I can’t sleep."

• She is a self-described "master of the art of fame." She has studied why and how others have achieved (and lost) fame and has applied those principles to her own work with fearless discipline.

• She connects with her followers in a way that is meaningful for them. Having felt different and alone in high school, the primary message to her predominantly teenage audience is to be yourself and love yourself – you are perfect just the way you are.

• She appears to protect her "self" in the process. Her constant costume changes help her maintain some level of privacy and not give away too much of herself. She is quoted as saying, "Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no trouble, noise, or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart."

In short, she’s visionary, passionate, principled, connected to the people she serves, and seems to be rooted in a strong sense of self. That’s a textbook list of peak performance qualities!

All too often, fame changes people. Whether or not Lady Gaga can hold on to herself and the principles that have propelled her to fame is yet to be seen. However, her commitment to peak performance principles certainly got her this far.

For those of you who are worried about the influence pop stars might have on young people, consider re-framing how you talk about them with your kids and grandkids. Regardless of how they might present themselves from an entertainment perspective, many are real-life examples of the principles of peak performance, and we all can learn from them.

How Leaders Influence Ethical Decision-Making

2011-02-27T15:59:00.000-08:00

Ethical decision-making is, of course, a personal choice. Influencing employees to make every-day decisions that are consistent with organizational values and purpose means getting personal with them – getting into their heads and hearts – so their choices are more likely to be consistent with yours.

In our work with leaders over the past 17 years, we’ve identified a few practices from those leaders who have most successfully affected the way their employees think and act. Here are some recommendations based on what we’ve learned from them.

1) Be clear about your organization's values and purpose and set high expectations for ethical decision-making.

2) Make your own decisions based on a strong set of internal guidelines and business considerations. Weigh alternatives thoughtfully and talk openly about how you came to your decisions. Whether your decisions are right or wrong, you will show employees the process and considerations you used for getting there.

3) Pay close attention to and ask questions about the ethical issues present in everyday decision-making. Your employees will learn to expect these questions and, as a result, begin to see potential ethical issues for themselves.

4) Recover with grace when you find you haven’t made the best decision. Don’t deny, defend, justify, or shift blame. Instead, take ownership and talk openly about what can be learned from the situation.

The toughest ethical issues are not those that are black and white, but instead are shades of gray. The frequency and nature of the conversations you have about ethical issues will shape your employees' ability to see them, think about them, and resolve them.

What are you doing to raise your own awareness of ethical issues, both obvious and subtle? What are you doing to "institutionalize" ethical decision-making? We’d like to hear from you.

How Strong Leaders Deal with Resistance to Change

2011-02-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

In my last blog, I drew the connection between dealing effectively with difficult people and working relentlessly on knowing who you are, where you are going, and who you want to take with you on that journey. Today I’d like to talk about another leadership challenge – resistance to change – and how focusing on self development matters there, too.

As anyone who has taken an important step toward achieving a goal or initiating a change knows, leadership always triggers resistance. Learning to deal with resistance is as important to leadership as any other quality.

When faced with resistance, some leaders capitulate to resistors and back away from leading. Some attempt to overcome resistance by exerting a stronger will than their opponents. (These leaders more often than not fail and burn out in the process.)

Many leaders fall into the easy – but still less effective – options of trying to understand the nature of the resistance, diagnosing why the resistance is happening, working hard to convince the other side, or trying to adapt solutions that appease the resistance but compromise the needed change.

The best strategy for dealing with resistance may also be the most difficult to execute. Strong leaders deal with resistance by first doing the following three things:

1) remaining emotionally calm while staying the course;

2) looking at themselves (instead of the resisters) to see where they might be stuck, and

3) staying connected to the resistors throughout the process without getting pulled into the drama.

Leaders who work on being emotionally separate and true to their aspirations while staying connected to those they lead provide the stability and maturity their communities need to move through the change. During any crisis of leadership, the better able leaders are to stay focused on themselves – to dig deep for clarity about what’s important – the better able they are to be decisive and move forward.

How Strong Leaders Deal with Difficult People

2011-02-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

First of all, let’s make sure we’re talking about difficult people, not different people. When asked to think about difficult people we work with, more often than not we think about people who have different goals, approaches, methods, styles, and (sadly) even appearances. Those folks aren’t necessarily difficult; they are just different. Learn to tell the difference between difficult and different, and a lot of your stress goes away. Even better, learn to appreciate the value of differences, and begin to seek them out.

Some people, though, are just plain difficult. Difficult people take many forms. Some are agitators who get vocal over any perceived slight. Some are negative gossips who engage in personal attacks and back-stabbing. Some seem to indulge in judging and criticizing projects and ideas just for the sport of it. Whatever the behavior, difficult people cause lots of discomfort, waste time, and disrupt progress.

How do strong leaders deal with difficult people? They tell them that if they want to be part of the community (family, group, team, organization, etc.), they have to adapt to it.

While this may sound authoritarian, the point is that strong leaders don’t require conformity of thought. On the contrary, they give everyone permission (including themselves) to say no, to take risks, to ask for what they need, to challenge the status quo, and to be willing to rethink everything they know on a daily basis. These permissions unleash energy, encourage individuality, and stimulate creativity within an organization. They fuel growth.

Requiring difficult people to adapt to the community means requiring conformity of behavior. It forces them to be accountable for the things they do — not what they think — that are harming the community.

Requiring everyone in the organizational community to conform to certain behaviors also defines the values and character of the leader who sets the requirements. When leaders assert themselves this way, they define who they are. The people in the leader’s community can clearly see who the leader is and can opt in or opt out as followers. Setting behavioral boundaries is risky business, but it is what strong leaders do.

Leaders who are able to take these kinds of stands with difficult people know themselves well and have the courage that comes naturally with confidence in one’s core values and aspirations. This leads us to what we continue to emphasize in our work with leaders. The most effective leaders we see are those who work relentlessly on knowing who they are, where they are going, and who they want to take with them on that journey. They are not afraid to assert their well-defined selves into their community’s culture and, in the process, protect it from the invasive damage difficult people can inflict.

Give Yourself This Gift This Holiday Season

2010-11-30T14:13:00.000-08:00

We keep a reading list. It’s made up of the professional development books and articles we most often recommend to others. The books that make it onto our list get there for one reason or another. Some provide compelling research on the nature of leadership and achievement. Some tell great stories about successful leaders and companies, and some simply shed light on what makes people tick.

We’ve just finished reading a book that’s going straight onto the list. The title of the book is Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time, by Susan Scott. This is a must-read for any leader or aspiring leader, and it has important cross-over value for your personal life. It’s an easy read and provides a step-by-step guide for having those tough conversations at work and at home that you have been avoiding or having with marginal or no success. Since all your conversations in life include you, the author begins by challenging you to confront the issues that are keeping you from having your most powerful, productive conversations. It’s all good stuff, so give yourself this gift for the holidays.

How do we decide which books to read for our continuing education? We listen for the sources other people reference — the books, articles, blogs, videos, webinars, and other medium that have impacted them — and when titles and authors keep coming up, we check them out. That’s how we found Fierce Conversations.

We’re always in the hunt for something that will challenge our way of thinking, create a light bulb moment, contribute to our understanding of leadership and personal growth, or inspire us to live with courage and purpose. Tell us your favorites. What have you read or seen that has made a difference in your work or home life? What made it important to you?

Getting To Know The People You Lead

2010-10-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

In previous blogs, I’ve talked about how different communities are today from the ones in which most of us grew up. Among other things, we are an older, more diverse, and more mobile population. Something else has changed in America.

In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam documents the decline in what he calls "social capital." Social capital refers to the social networks and organizations that build relationships and trust among people. Examples of traditional organizations that have nurtured social capital include church groups, PTAs, fraternal organizations, service clubs, and labor unions.

For reasons we have not been able to explain, social capital in America has declined steadily since the turn of the 20th century. One well-documented consequence of lower social capital is declining civic engagement. Why does civic engagement matter? Researchers in global democracy have discovered that people who are civically engaged create communities that are more economically vibrant than those where people are more reliant on the state. By principle then, it appears that a community with a higher level of social capital prospers more than it would otherwise. All other things equal, the communities with the highest social capital win.

There are signs that the decline in social capital may be reversing course. With social networking systems such as Facebook and Twitter becoming more mainstream, people are beginning to connect and converse in ways they didn’t five to ten years ago.

In an interesting article published today, FastCompany magazine asks whether or not the number of Facebook fans a candidate has can predict the outcome of an election. Here are some interesting numbers from their article:

In Florida, Charlie Crist has 101,127 fewer Facebook fans than his Republican rival Mark Rubio. Kentucky congressional contender Jack Conway has 74,285 fewer fans than Republican Rand Paul. In California congressional challenger Carly Fiorina has half as many fans as Democratic incumbent Rep. Barbara Boxer.

We’ll know soon enough after the election if there is a correlation between social networking strength and success at the polls. What I take from this now is a growing conviction that all leaders — public and private sector alike — need to plug into the new ways in which people are choosing to socialize.
Marion Anderson, UN Peace Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, was quoted as saying: "Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it." Electronic social networking is a growing, important mechanism for leaders to find out what’s in the hearts and minds of those they hope to influence.

Leading Groups in Solving Problems

2010-10-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

When faced with a problem, many of us jump immediately to finding a solution. That’s why some of our meetings end up in frustratingly-long debates over the best solution. Everyone comes to the table with his or her idea of what the problem is and what should be done about it. The discussion becomes a war of ideas with battlefield casualties. Sound familiar?

Try this process the next time you lead a group that is solving a problem. You'll reach a better solution -- one that benefits from everyone's thinking and is likely to have the group's full commitment -- and have more fun getting there.

1) Reality Check
Begin by brainstorming all the things the group knows to be true about the problem. Consider factors such as laws, rules, perceptions, expectations, assumptions, predictions, decision makers, stakeholders, and political and social forces and conditions. This step will help bring to the surface any underlying "facts" that group members disagree on. Often, it is the disagreement over what’s real that is behind the conflict over the best solution. If you discover a fact that people disagree about, work to resolve the disagreement or, at a minimum, acknowledge that more than one perspective exists that needs to be considered in the final solution.

2) Ideal Outcome
Now brainstorm what the ideal outcome will look like. Include on your list any outcomes you want to avoid. Resist the temptation to leave off an ideal outcome because someone thinks it isn't doable. When you’ve reached agreement on the ideal outcome, then you are ready to talk about a plan for getting there.

3) Plan
Now you can talk about specific solutions — means, ploys, strategies, procedures — to achieve the ideal outcome. At this point in the process, the best proposal may become obvious to the group since they’ve already reached agreement on the nature of the problem and ideal outcome. If not, give participants a chance to fully explain how each proposed solution addresses both the current reality and the ideal outcome.

There still may be disagreement about which proposed solution is the best. My advice if you get stuck at this stage? Go back and work steps one and two a little harder. That’s where the real obstacles for effective group problem-solving usually lie.

Leadership Imperatives for the New Decade

2010-09-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

What are people expecting from leaders today that is different from the last decade? I’ve been speaking to and with organizational leaders and their employees from around the country, and here’s what they’ve been saying business leaders must do today and over the next decade to regain a strong economic footing and compete successfully in our changing world.

Be a better risk manager. When they were flush with resources, many business leaders believed they could buy their way out of problems. Not any more. In addition to making sure they cover operational risks (such as workers’ comp, liability, and property losses), today’s leaders need to pay close attention to both speculative and environmental risks. In the past few years, we’ve seen large companies disappear because of careless speculative investing, and we’ve seen the huge financial and reputation losses associated with cleaning up environmental disasters.

Stay flexible. Businesses need to stay agile so they can move quickly when necessary. That means leaders must help their companies balance the important need to staff up to meet production needs with the equally important need to stay lean and flexible. Our economy craves job creation, but many of today’s leaders say they are looking at alternative ways of adding resources without encumbering their organizations.

Stay connected. Social networking systems are here to stay and are powerful ways for leaders to stay in touch with customers, colleagues, and employees. Further, as the use of social networking systems to refer and recommend products and services grows, leaders who stay connected can see and influence their organization’s on-line accessibility and reputation.

Prepare for workforce changes. The communities we live in today are very different from the communities in which many of us grew up. The population is older, more diverse, and more mobile. More women work outside the home, more men stay home with kids, and fewer young adults work. In today’s marketplace, there is a serious mismatch between the skills job seekers have and the skills businesses need. The next decade will bring even greater change. By 2020, more than half the workforce will be over the age of 45. Leaders must pay attention to the evolving talents, skills, and expectations of employees or they will risk losing the organization’s readiness to achieve business goals.

Be more than a COO. Operational excellence is imperative, but it’s not enough today. People are nervous about the present and uncertain about the future, so those at the top of organizations must inspire hope and optimism. More than anything, followers are looking for some emotional energy and leaders need to be there to help provide it. Leaders often forget they set the mood in their organizations. Leaders who aren’t feeling hopeful and optimistic themselves need to find a way to get there – quickly.

Have you thought about what the last decade has taught us and what the new decade will look like? How has the last decade changed the way you lead? What would you add to this list of what business leaders must do today and in the next decade? If you are a leader, what is your level of hope and optimism? What are the sources of your emotional fuel?

More on Assertiveness: A Critical Quality of Leadership

2010-08-31T10:24:00.000-07:00

On July 5, I wrote about assertiveness. I sourced research that made the point that assertiveness is an important, yet often-overlooked leadership quality. It’s a much bigger deal than most of us think. Simply put, if you err on either extreme on the assertiveness continuum by being too aggressive or too passive, you will lose leadership stature in the eyes of others regardless of the strength of your other leadership qualities.

Let’s take a closer look at what aggressive, passive, and assertive behavior are all about.

Aggressiveness is about getting results — about being results oriented. There is nothing wrong with being results oriented, except when you are being that way at the expense of others. One reason why people act aggressively is that they are afraid they will lose out on something if they don’t. Aggressive behavior often gets results, but at a hefty social cost.

Passiveness is all about preserving relationships. One reason why people act passively and choose to not go after what they want is because they don't want to step on toes. There's nothing wrong with being relationship-oriented, except when you are being that way at the expense of getting results. Passive behavior won’t create waves, but it won’t help you get what you want in life either.

Aggressive and passive behaviors have two things in common: 1) they are often fear driven, and 2) they are both issues of a lack of respect (for others or for yourself).

Where do you fall on the continuum between being aggressive on one extreme and passive on the other? Most of us can self-diagnose pretty easily. If you flip-flop between the two, then you are what is commonly referred to as passive/aggressive. Regardless of what side of the continuum you tend to fall, the strategy for becoming more assertive is the same: respectfully speak up for yourself.

I’ve heard it said there is genius in boldness and wisdom in compassion. Assertiveness — a critical quality of leadership — is both bold and compassionate. Let go of the fear, find your voice, and respectfully speak up. You may not always get what you want, but you will be seen as someone who has courage and compassion, and that's critical to your status as a leader.

Leadership Development: The Changing Nature of Influence

2010-08-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

I recently read an interview with Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, and his remarks got me thinking about leadership and the changing nature of influence. Here’s what he had to say about it:

"It is interesting to think that maybe social media is not only democratizing communication, but also influence and the ability to influence.

“I do question whether people actually think that they are influencers, but I believe they see their potential. What's interesting about Twitter and the influencers that someone follows – like say Shaquille O'Neal – is that they see someone who is using the exact same tools that they have access to and I think that inspires this hope to be able to really engage with someone like him.

“So signing up with a service like Twitter and then following him and taking the next step to reply to him and then the next step where he actually replies to you or he retweets you and suddenly you've become an influencer. Suddenly you are picked up by this person you admire or follow and that just changes the dynamic and then you get more confidence around influencing others and you look for ways to do it.”

Leaders are always looking for ways to influence followers – to motivate them to think or act in a particular direction. What Dorsey alludes to in his interview is how empowering it is to followers to catch the attention of, have the ear of, and potentially influence leaders. Influence – like trust, respect, loyalty, and other elements of strong leader/follower relationships – is a two-way street. The more leaders give the more they get.

Many of today’s leaders question the value to them of social media like Twitter. If you fall into that group, give these questions some consideration. How accessible are you to the people you want to influence? What opportunities do you give them to influence you? How personal are those opportunities? How do they know they’ve been heard? How much do you know about what’s in the hearts and on the minds of the people you want to influence?

Finding Happiness at Work and in Life

2010-07-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

For all of you leadership/peak performance junkies out there, the July/August 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review is a great read. One article in particular, Clayton Christensen’s "How Will You Measure Your Life?" draws interesting parallels between finding happiness at work and in life, and he offers several recommendations for getting happy that apply to both.

His concluding recommendation is this: Find a metric by which your life/career will be judged and then resolve to live every day to that end. His advice got me thinking about a friend of mine who seems to have built both a successful career and a happy life, and I wondered if he had a "metric" that mattered to him. I had a chance to find out last weekend, when he and I were on the patio tending the barbeque. I mentioned the article and asked him what he attributed his good life to.

He told me that when he was much younger, he went through a devastating personal loss that caused him to question the very meaning of life. He struggled for several years until he realized that there were only a few things in life that were really important to him and that as long as he kept his focus on those few things, he felt happy.

For him, those things are (1) love and respect others, (2) work hard, (3) learn, and (4) have fun. He said he tries to live those values 100% of every day, he surrounds himself only with people who live that way, and he avoids those who don't. This applies to his personal life as well as work.

Christensen's article suggests there really is no difference between what makes us happy at work and what makes us happy in the rest of our lives. As you work on your personal leadership development, here are a few questions to ask yourself. Are you happy enough? Have you figured out your metrics? What’s most important to you? What are you resolved to live by? Do you surround yourself at work and in life with people who share your values? How much in alignment are your metrics and you life? What would others say is important to you by observing the life you lead?

Remember, what gets measured gets done. It's hard to figure out how to quantitatively measure values such as "How much am I respecting others today?" or "How much fun am I having this week?" But it's a good problem to work on.

Leadership Development: Master Yourself First

2010-07-08T16:18:00.000-07:00

Mastering yourself is fundamental to leadership and any other form of peak performance. Make sure your own house is in order before worrying about the order of everyone else's. Here are some thoughts on mastering yourself first.

Stay on your toes.
"On your toes" is a figure of speech that describes being alert and ready to go. "On your heels" has the opposite meaning: off balance, unprepared, and easily toppled. Being on your toes is, of course, where you want to be. You have the greatest chance of performing at the top of your game when you’re on your toes.

The on-your-toes metaphor applies beautifully to leadership effectiveness. As a leader, you have to manage both the expected and unexpected things that happen at work. When you are on your toes — grounded, confident, and clear-headed — you are best able to use your strengths to deal with the unexpected. When you are on you heels — off balance, unsure, and confused — you are more apt to fall back on bad habits that hurt your ability to lead.

I'm willing to bet there are times when you've been "on your toes", and there have been times you've been "on your heels". What do these look and feel like for you? What are the things you can do to recognize when you're on your heels, and what are the things you can do to get back on your toes?

The key to staying on your toes is to know what things you have control over and focus your attention and energy there. When mastered, the following capabilities will prepare you to be at your best regardless of what happens around you.

Work within your circle of influence.
As simple as it sounds, many leaders waste time and energy getting worked up over people, issues, and events they have no control over. Effective leaders, on the other hand, size up what they can control — what’s inside their circle of influence — and begin making decisions there. At the very center of that circle is how they feel, what they think, and what they say and do. If they get a handle on these first, they are better able to make choices about how to influence the things that are outside their circle of influence — how others feel, what others think, and what others say and do.

Accept, change, or leave it.
For those things leaders can’t control, they have three choices within their circle of influence that are empowering. They can choose to accept the situation as it is, they can choose to change what they can change about it, or they can choose to leave it. The fourth option, to do nothing, leaves them stuck and feeling powerless.

Acceptance is the most difficult choice for leaders since leadership at its very core is about facilitating change. To achieve real acceptance (so you are neutralizing and not simply stuffing your feelings), learn how to re-frame how you think about the person, the issue, or the situation so it all makes sense. Remember this about acceptance: (1) few of us are as good at it as we think we are; (2) while acceptance is a choice, it is a continuing process that can have setbacks, and (3) acceptance requires that you replace judgment of others with positive internal self-talk.

I’ve worked with hundreds of leaders over the years, and here are some of my favorite self-talk phrases leaders have said they use to help re-frame an issue so it all makes sense.

"That’s the way the world is."
"He’s doing the best he can with the skills he has."
"I’m not the target."
"It is what it is."

Understanding all of the applications of those self-talk phrases is something we'll have to get into in a future posting!

Consider the challenges today that have you back on your heels. How well are you focusing on controlling the things within your circle of influence? How are you thinking, feeling, and acting? What are you accepting, changing, or leaving?

Measured Assertiveness: The Unrecognized Leadership Ingredient

2010-07-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

"Like salt in a sauce, too much overwhelms the dish; too little is similarly distracting; but just the right amount allows the other flavors to dominate our experience. Just as food is rarely praised for being perfectly salted, leaders may somewhat infrequently be praised for being perfectly assertive."
What Breaks a Leader: The Curvilinear Relation Between Assertiveness and Leadership, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007

When it comes to leadership effectiveness, how others perceive you is everything. If you want to influence them — to move them from point A to point B without using force — then it’s imperative that you understand how they perceive effective leadership and how they perceive you.

In the article cited in the above quote, researchers Daniel Ames and Francis Flynn focused on what causes the perception of ineffective leadership. They found that either too much assertiveness (aggressiveness and dominance) or too little assertiveness (passiveness, lack of initiative and conviction) hurt the perception of effective leadership in equal measure. The right degree of assertiveness was — just like salt in a sauce — present in people who were perceived as strong leaders, but largely unidentified as a leadership strength.

The message for anyone who wants to become a more effective leader? Assertiveness counts. While assertiveness might not come up on most people’s list of leadership qualities, behaving with too much or too little assertiveness can break you as a leader.

Where do you fall on the continuum between being aggressive on one extreme and passive on the other? What’s more important to you: getting your way or getting along?

Building Trust: Why Competence Matters

2010-07-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I talked about the four components of trust: competence, transparency, predictability, and genuine concern. I'd like to get into a little more detail about each, and today, we'll focus on COMPETENCE.

Simply put, people won't trust a leader who is seen as less than competent to get the job done. I was reading The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey, and he wrote about competence in a more personal level. He said while his wife has complete trust in him, she wouldn't trust him to perform surgery on her. This is for obvious reasons. He is not a surgeon, and he is not competent in surgery.

More than twenty years ago, I was hired to manage the Elections Division in Washington County, Oregon. I had never worked in Elections before. I had management experience in both the private and public sectors; in fact, I had been a public sector department head. That was the reason I was hired, my boss had told me. While I had no background in what the office did, he felt it was important to bring someone in who was an experienced manager. He even felt that having someone with no technical experience might just be the "breath of fresh air" the office needed.

Elections is a very highly technical field. It was much more technical than I could even imagine. It was overwhelming how much the office needed to know to make sure the job was done right, and I was grateful that I had a staff of experienced people who knew the business. God knows, I didn't know the business. And God knows, they knew I didn't know the business, and it was a very difficult management challenge. They didn't trust me because they didn't trust my competence. I didn't begin earning trust until I started gaining competence in what they did.

"Management just doesn't understand what I do!" Employees often don't trust their managers for just that reason. That's why they appreciate leaders who are willing to "get into the trenches" and "get their hands dirty". Further, trusting the competence of their managers means not just that their managers are willing to do the dirty work -- it is that their managers are even able to do the dirty work.

This doesn't mean that anyone who manages people needs to be able -- if needed -- to take over the work of all the employees. However, management competence, in the eyes of most employees, means that managers are willing to try to understand as much as possible what their employees do. It's simply not enough to sit in the corner office thinking "big picture", developing policies and procedures, and putting out high-level fires. You may think you've earned it, but it won't be enough for them. They need to trust that you can see the work world through their eyes so you can help solve problems, advocate for needed resources, and be their voice in the organization.

One final note about competence, and this is specifically for those of you who do work in highly technical fields. While competence is a component of trust, it is not the only component of trust. People will not trust you purely on your competence. If you are a doctor, lawyer, engineer, architect, mechanic, or elections technician, it's important that you understand this: you can't be so competent that they will trust you only on that competence. The certificate you have on your wall does not guarantee trust. You must also offer the other components of trust. You must be transparent, predictable, and show genuine concern.

Leadership Challenge: The Balance of Allegiance

2010-06-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Recently, our chief of police here in Portland was fired. It has happened here before; as in any big city, the job of police chief is high profile and politically sensitive. Also common to big cities, the manner in which the police do their job is under seemingly constant public scrutiny and can be a topic of hot debate. On any given date, an event can take place that reignites that debate.

In a parting interview, the ousted chief commented on the challenges of leading the police department. One of the most difficult parts of the job, the chief said, was the constant struggle to balance the public’s expectations for police performance and accountability against the officers’ expectation that the chief is behind them, representing them, and defending them.

The chief’s struggle is a good example of a challenge all leaders face. I call it the balance of allegiance. In any organization, people who lead other people are asked to represent and defend the organization’s policies – and upper management decisions – to the employees who report to them. Those same leaders must also represent and defend the interests of their employees to upper management. Balancing the interests of these two groups can be conflicting, and striking the perfect balance is sometimes very difficult.

It’s especially challenging for leaders during lean times. When money is tight, those difficult organizational decisions mean that (best case) employees are taxed with much more to do with far less resources, and (worst case) employees may lose their jobs. You have to support the organization, but you also have to care for and support the people who work for you. What makes the balance of allegiance even more difficult is that not everyone will agree what the perfect balance is.

Top executives face the same balance of allegiance challenge. They are responsible to both the Board of Directors (in the chief’s case, the city council and the citizens they represent) and to the employees who report to them.

If you think about it, employees at any level of an organization also have to deal with the balance of allegiance. Support service employees, for example, have to balance the need to provide good customer service against the need to administer and regulate. Sales employees have to balance the need to get the best deal for their customers against the need for profitability.

The recent removal of the police chief is a reminder that leaders at all levels face balance of allegiance issues that require thoughtful attention and constant adjusting. Adding to the challenge is that there will always be people on both sides of the balance who never believe you are correctly balanced. However, leaders who can manage their own balance of allegiance issues skillfully are likely to foster a culture where their employees do, too. And that’s good for the organization.

What balance of allegiance issues do you face? In which direction do you need to adjust? As a leader, please constantly assess and adjust your balances of allegiance.

Creating A Culture of Trust

2010-06-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

In yesterday’s post, I referenced a recent study by IBM that reported that CEOs around the world right now consider creativity the most important leadership quality. I also talked about the link between creativity and trust. In short, trust gives us the freedom to take creative risks. It allows us to express new ideas, bring up problems, ask for help, admit mistakes, freely give and accept feedback, and focus on things other than protecting our backs.

Leaders who want more creativity need to build a culture of trust by personally setting the standard. Above all, they must be competent, transparent, predictable, and genuinely concerned about the people whose trust they want to earn.

Let's take a closer look at these four elements of trust.

Competence Simply put, people won't trust a leader who is seen as less than competent to get the job done.

Transparency A leader who fails to be open and honest on critical issues risks suspicion and distrust. It's human to distrust someone who withholds information that is important to us.

Predictability Have you ever dreaded doing or saying something because you can’t predict how the other person will react? Unpredictability breeds caution and anxiety, symptoms of a lack of trust.

Genuine Concern People won’t trust their future to a leader whose actions are self-serving. Instead, when that leader tries to exert influence, his or her actions are seen as manipulative. We are naturally drawn to leaders who look out for our best interests.

These four elements are critical for trust to thrive in an organizaton. How much trust exists in your organization? What elements of trust keep your organization from unleashing its creative potential?

The Link Between Creativity and Trust

2010-06-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

The perception of what it takes to be great leader changes with the times.

In a recent study, IBM asked 1,500 CEOs in 60 countries what they considered to be today’s most important leadership quality. The answer, creativity. Roughly 60% said creativity was the most important leadership quality, while 52% cited integrity, and 35% named global thinking.

For many leaders, becoming more creative is a challenge. Their creativity is usually not the quality that got them to the corner office in the first place. Instead, they’re most often known for their decisiveness, their business acumen, their people skills, their drive, or their history of achievement.

If you're an organizational leader and want to be more creative, try creating a culture of trust. What does trust have to do with creativity? Here's the link:

First, when leaders trust themselves, trust their boards of directors, and trust their relationships with their customers, they feel much safer taking the risks associated with creativity. Leaders feel more free if they are less likely to be judged solely on failed risks, which happens easily when there is an absence of high trust.

Second, would you rather invest in a company in which the CEO demonstrates high creativity, or would you rather invest in a company in which the CEO has created a culture of trust that has unleashed the creativity of all of the employees? By creating a culture of trust, leaders create a stronger sense of team. With a stronger sense of team, employees not only feel more free to create, but they want to create because they are more emotionally invested in everyone's success.

CEOs place a high value on creativity today. To develop your creativity, ask yourself these questions: What's keeping you from being more creative? What are you afraid of? What don’t you trust?

"Without trust there is no risk-taking and without risk-taking there is no innovation...if you want to get more people to take the necessary risk to innovate, just put more trust in the room." — Dov Seidman (from The World is Flat)