The following is a guest piece by Jon Katzenbach and DeAnne Aguirre.

It is striking to see how many chief executives see their most important responsibility as being the leader of the company’s culture. According to Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, “Culture is your company’s number one asset.” Her counterpart at Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, has said, “Everything I do is a reinforcement or not of what we want to have happen culturally.”

Recognizing the importance of culture in business is not the same thing as being an effective cultural chief executive. The CEO is the most visible leader in a company. His or her direct engagement in all facets of the company’s culture can make an enormous difference, not just in how people feel about the company, but in how they perform.

There are several things you can do from your highly visible position at the top of the hierarchy to spark and foster the cultural realignments you want to see:

1. Demonstrate the power of positive urgency
Time and again, we hear executives cite the importance of having a “burning platform” – a stress-producing crisis, whether externally driven or self-induced – to incite a high-performance culture. There is a much better way to overcome complacency.

As a CEO or senior executive, the greatest thing you can do is to marshal an authentic sense of urgency, but not one built solely on the logical reasons that change is necessary. Rather, build an emotional sense of urgency, focusing on the values that the company cares about collectively: its way of serving customers, its desire for growth and success, its positive impact on social and community issues, and the attraction and welcome that people felt when they first arrived.

2. Pick a critical few behaviors
To help people capitalize on the best aspects of your culture, you have to focus attention on the critical few behaviors that you believe matter most. These are a few positive sources of energy, pride, and interactions that, when nurtured and spread to scale, will improve company performance significantly.

As simple as it sounds, this approach will not only accelerate the behavior change that matters most, but also evolve and align your culture more effectively than forcing a major and potentially disruptive culture change effort on a broadly diverse global organization.

It is essential to emulate at least some of these emerging key behaviors yourself—to be a living model of the culture you aspire to lead. People pay rapt attention to what the CEO does, not just what the CEO says.

You can’t rely on communications, no matter how inspiring. You, and ideally a few other senior leaders, have to step out by behaving in new ways that both capitalize on elements in the current culture and demonstrate a key shift in cultural alignment.

In the video below, retired Campbell’s Soup Company CEO Doug Conant shares with Booz & Company senior partner Jon Katzenbach an example of how one of his critical few behaviors allowed him to connect more effectively with people in his organization:

3. Balance your appeals to the company to include both rational and emotional cues
When putting together a business strategy or a case for action, it’s important to integrate the rational arguments from top leaders with compelling emotional appeals at more personal levels.

One without the other is unlikely to sustain cultural alignment. In other words, in addition to a rational business case for change and other formal mechanisms, it’s important to develop emotional impact through such forces as peer approval, the support of colleagues, and the admiration of friends and family.

4. Make the change sustainable by maintaining vigilance on the few critical elements that you have established as important
Your role as a cultural leader starts on Day One of your appointment as CEO. It will not end until the last day you hold that office. Indeed, your persistence in emphasizing the right cultural behavior will continue to be influential after you have left.

Because cultures evolve in informal ways that are hard to track, they can easily degrade before many people are even aware something bad is happening. Chief executives in peak-performing companies almost never let this happen; they work hard to keep an eye on the critical few behaviors over time.

You can either keep promoting the same few behaviors or, after the first few have taken hold, pick a few more to model and support.

In all this activity, avoid delegating your culture-oriented actions. Do as much as you can yourself.

NOTE: This is an abridged piece from the strategy+business article, “Culture and the Chief Executive.” You can read the full version of this article here.

Jon Katzenbach is a senior partner in Booz & Company’s organization, change, and leadership practice, and co-leads the firm’s Katzenbach Center in New York. He is the coauthor with Zia Khan of “Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the (in)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results“.

DeAnne Aguirre is a senior partner with Booz & Company based in San Francisco, and one of the firm’s foremost experts on organization effectiveness and change leadership. She co-leads the Katzenbach Center.

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I’m honoured to host this guest piece by former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chad “Corntassel” Smith.

Forty years ago, when I was a college sophomore attending the University of Tennessee, I was walking down Neyland Stadium Drive with a fellow student. We passed a new building and he said, “There is our new swimming natatorium.” I said “That’s nice.” He said, “We only have had a swimming team four years.” I said, “Good.” Then he said. “They are nationally ranked.” I said, “Wow! That is something.”

And then, he said, “The coach had never coached swimming before.” Now he had my attention. I asked, “How did he do that?” He replied, “The coach had a simple philosophy, if you want a football team you get some horses, if you want a swim team you get some fishes.”

It dawned on me that the coach was outstanding in recruiting student athletes with talent, and excellent assistant coaches who knew how to teach techniques. The coach knew one of his most important jobs was to recruit and develop leaders.

My favorite saying is, “Adversity creates opportunity”. For the Cherokee Nation and most organizations and governments, the greatest adversity is lack of leadership and the greatest opportunity, of course, is to develop leadership, in other words, to get some “horses and fishes.”

Leadership defined

The dictionary defines “lead” as “to take or conduct on the way”. Therefore, leadership is the ability to take or conduct on the way; that means you must start somewhere and go somewhere. Using mathematical language, Point A is where you start and Point B is where you want to go. Leadership is the ability to take yourself and others from Point A to Point B.

It also drives and motivates us to begin and complete a journey. We can prepare ourselves for the leadership journey by learning skills to navigate the way, understanding challenges, and overcoming adversities. Everyone is a leader.

Leadership starts with Point A – Humility

We must know where we are, before we can find the path to where we want to go. We must establish Point A, a beginning, to navigate to Point B, an end. Just like getting directions from our GPS in the car or a smartphone, you must enter a “starting” and an “ending” point.

For individuals, determining Point A is a humbling, self-assessment designed to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. Determining Point A includes understanding your relationship to place, time, economics, spirituality, family, hometown, community, and friends, etc.

It is humbling to see yourself and your abilities in relation to the world, history and the future. This exercise in humility is the foundation for building confidence.

In Cherokee thought, confidence and humility are closely connected. The Cherokee word ᎤᏓᏙᎯᏳᎯ (udadohiyuhi) means confident: “Have confidence in yourself and do not doubt your abilities, but temper all with humility”.

A vivid example of understanding Point A humility is to open the Google Earth map on your computer and zoom back from your home. You quickly see where your home is located among the Earth’s continents. The value of the map is not to show how small you are, but how you relate to the earth.

For institutions, determining Point A is not much different; it is making an assessment and taking an inventory of its strengths and weaknesses, including its competitive advantages and intelligence, and then determining the nature of its market and its market position.

The adage that “If you don’t know where you have been – how do you know where you are going?” is profound. Determining Point A is not only a snapshot of where you and/or your organization are at a moment in time; it is also the recognition of where you have been and what experience, knowledge, education and intelligence you carry with you.

It was critical for the Cherokee Nation government to understand and know its history to determine where it was as a Nation, and where it wanted to go. A major starting point for the Cherokee Nation was when it signed its first treaty with Great Britain in 1721, some 55 years before the United States even existed.

That signified that the Cherokee Nation was a government and belonged in the world community of nations. The signing of that treaty reinforced its ability to understand challenges or adversity created by other governments, and its opportunity to build a great Nation.

Leadership drives to Point B – Vision

After you have determined where you are, then you must determine where your Point B is; where do you want to go? What is the product, the goal, the designed purpose, the destination of your life, organization or efforts?

Vision is looking into the future or off into the distance for better circumstances. If we cannot articulate our vision in ten words or less, then we lack clarity in what we want; it cannot be branded, and people cannot relate to it.

For example, what should be the vision for the Cherokee society? I often ask groups of Cherokee speakers, usually elders, how they would interpret a concept in Cherokee thought. Once I asked them, “How would you describe a person in their late twenties or early thirties that was successful?”

Success was suggested as having a meaningful job, starting a loving family, taking care of their parents, being a good neighbor, taking responsibility, enjoying themselves and being a patriot of the Cherokee Nation. They concluded that in the Cherokee language, you would describe that person as “mature.”

Understanding Point A – where we begin, results in humility, perspective and confidence from which we can start a journey, build an institution, achieve a dream and reach Point B – our vision, product, purpose or destination.

For many people and institutions, Point B – or where they want to go can be described as maturing. Are you prepared to recruit and develop some horses and fishes? Where will you lead yourself and/or your organization?

Chad Smith, the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1999 to 2011, grew its assets from $150 million to $1.2 billion, increased business profits 2,000 percent, improved healthcare services from $18 million to $310 million, created 6,000 jobs, and dramatically advanced its education, language, and cultural preservation programs.

He is also the author of “Leadership Lessons from the Cherokee Nation”, as well as a public speaker and leadership and organizational design consultant. To learn more about Chad, visit his website at chadsmith.com.

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The following is a guest piece by Megan Totka.

We often hear that great leaders are born, not bred. This would imply that you must have leadership in your blood, rather than be able to learn great leadership qualities. While it may be true that some people are natural born leaders, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that great leadership cannot be taught.

On our Chamber blog and website, we focus on the needs of small business owners. Many small businesses are started by people who want to act on a great idea. These people may or may not have previous leadership experience or even possess inherent leadership qualities.

In the case of these business owners, it’s imperative to develop leadership skills, and quickly. Even if your business is a one-man show, it’s still critical to be assertive when it comes to business, and being assertive is absolutely a leadership quality.

If you are involved in a small business, whether it is as the owner, partner, or employee, it’s a great idea to take a few minutes to think about the leadership qualities that you possess and how you can use them to benefit yourself, your company, and those around you.

A few leadership qualities that are important to those who are involved in the small business world:

Integrity – a small business is nearly guaranteed to fail if its leader does not have integrity. Yes, you may be able to skate by in the business world for a short while, or even sometimes a long while, if you are dishonest, but the odds are absolutely not in your favor.

A good leader will do the right thing, even if it’s not going to produce an ideal outcome for themselves or their business. Having integrity in your business dealings will attract people back to your business again and again, and it will also entice them to recommend your business to others.

Dedication – I think this is one of the most important leadership qualities that must be held by anyone in the small business world. Without dedication, your business is going nowhere, and quickly.

Haven’t we all heard stories of entrepreneurs who work 80 hour weeks without paying themselves a salary in order to get their business off of the ground? That’s dedication, and to make a small business successful, it’s absolutely necessary.

Humbleness – while being humble may not be something that you would think of as a great leadership quality right off the bat, it absolutely is. Being able to give credit to others when it’s due and not taking all of the glory for the success of anything that you do in life is important.

People will not be willing to help you out, work for you, or even be able to enjoy your company in a casual setting if you take all of the credit, all of the time. Businesses are not built in a day, and they are certainly not built by just one pair of hands.

So why all of this talk about leadership qualities when the title of this blog is about helping others? The answer is, because it’s important to hone these qualities in yourself before you can help others. And haven’t most of us been taught for quite some time that the best way to learn is by teaching?

As a small business owner in particular, the opportunity to teach others to be great leaders often presents itself. The more great leaders that you can cultivate within your company, the better.

Now, you may be asking why you want to teach everyone that works for you or with you to be a leader. Wouldn’t that make for too many leaders and not enough followers? The answer is no! Helping people to develop the leadership qualities listed above, and many others, will only lead your business to be more successful in the long run.

You want your employees and customers to not be timid; they need to feel like they can present their own ideas and have their input valued. When a person possesses leadership skills, they can share ideas with confidence. They can also take criticism and turn it into a learning experience.

There are many different ways to cultivate leadership skills. Consider meeting with your business associates or employees on a regular basis to talk about different leadership qualities. Not only will this offer a break from the everyday workflow, it can potentially spark discussions and gather ideas that can improve your company.

You can also consider attending and/or sending your employees to leadership conferences or seminars. Sometimes getting an outside point of view is a great way to learn more about yourself and qualities that are inherent to you.

As I discussed in my previous guest piece, leadership in a small business is absolutely critical. Take some time to begin to cultivate leadership qualities in those that surround you, and I can guarantee that you and your business will reap the benefits.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

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What does storytelling reveal to us as being the key attributes leaders everywhere need to exhibit to encourage employees to follow them both in good times and in bad? That’s the basis of my conversation with Forbes columnist and leadership writer/consultant, Erika Andersen.

Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a coaching, consulting and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. Erika also serves as a consultant and advisor to CEOs and top executives from several organizations including GE, Gannett Corporation, Time Warner Cable, Rockwell Automation, Turner Broadcasting, and Madison Square Garden.

In addition to her popular business blog on Forbes, Erika is the author of three books, including her latest one, “Leading So People Will Follow”, which examines the “hero story” motif and what it reveals as the six core attributes successful leaders use to inspire others to follow their leadership.

Over the course of our conversation, Erika shares a number of stories and examples to illustrate these key leadership attributes including:

• How leaders can overcome the current short-term focus in order to motivate and empower their employees to commit to their long-term vision for their organization.
• Why leaders must be both passionate and dispassionate in order to gain awareness of the concerns and needs of those under their care.
• The underlying behaviour that helps leaders to understand what’s behind the actions and words of those you lead.
• How leaders can be generous with their limited time and resources in order to ensure the collective success of their employees.
• What leaders really need to do to exemplify trustworthiness in their leadership.

As I mentioned at the end of the show, I’d love to hear what you think about this episode, as well as what other topics you’d be interested in hearing more about in upcoming episodes of my show. You can share your thoughts/ideas by leaving a comment below or by filling out the contact form on my website.

Click on the player below to listen to the podcast:

[Running time: 38 minutes]

This episode, along with other episodes of this show, are also available on iTunes (please rate this show on iTunes if you listen/download the episode).

Noteworthy links:

• Buy Erika Andersen’s book “Leading So People Will Follow” on Amazon.com (or Amazon.ca for Canadian readers).
• Learn more about Liz’s work and her company at Proteus-International.com.
• Read Erika’s business blog on Forbes.

The post Leadership Biz Cafe Podcast #12 – Erika Andersen On Leading So People Will Follow appeared first on TanveerNaseer.com.

If there’s one ailment most of us can agree on that’s found in today’s workplaces it’s a lack of engagement between employees and their work. Specifically, a lack of connection between what we do and what matters to us – both professionally and personally. Now, thanks to the recent study “Philips Work/Life Survey” conducted by Philips North America, we have additional insights into why organizations and their leaders need to address the issue of creating meaningful work in today’s workplaces.

As part of my collaboration with Philips North America for this new study, I was able to review the raw data that was collected from a national sample of 1 000 US workers, and I found some interesting patterns on how employees view their relationship between their work, their career goals and what they derive a sense of satisfaction from in their lives.

These findings – which I’ll discuss below – can help leaders to understand what they’ll need to do in the months and years ahead to ensure their organization not only survives, but thrives in this new era of work.

1. How gender impacts work/life balance and meaningful work
While the Philips study found that men are slightly more satisfied with their jobs than women (47% of men compared to 40% of women), the more interesting finding is how men are more driven to find a connection between their passions and work than women.

When asked how often they’re able to pursue their personal interests and passions through their work, nearly half of the men (47%) responded all or most of the time, while only 30% of women reported the same. Men were also more willing to take a pay cut if that would allow them to do work that was connected to their passions and interests (75% of male respondants compared to only 57% of female respondants).

These two findings reveal how men are more likely to make career decisions based mostly on their ability to do work that provides a sense of meaning, compared to women who tend to take into consideration personal/family responsibilities when making decisions about their career path.

In this light, it’s not surprising that only 13% of women feel their organization’s top priority is talent development – compared to 21% of men – as the type of development opportunities organizations provide often fails to take into consideration employee commitments outside of the workplace.

What these findings serve to reinforce is the differences in how men and women approach the workplace and their careers – where men are clearly willing to pursue meaningful work to the point of switching to a lower paying job, while women continue to struggle to find a balance between being able to do meaningful work while respecting their personal obligations outside of the workplace.

It also serves as an important reminder to leaders to make sure that they appreciate these differences not just in terms of how they develop their employees, but also the need to ensure that all employees have a realistic opportunity to do meaningful work.

2. Employees need our help to identify and connect with what matters
One of the study’s more revealing findings is an apparent double-standard in what we recommend our family and friends use to assess a new job opportunity, and what we do ourselves when faced with a similar decision. When study participants were asked if they would recommend that a family member or friend accept a job offer “without fully considering how it adds meaning to his/her life”, over 60% of respondants said no.

Ironically, 60% of these same respondants admitted that they have taken a job “without fully considering how the job adds meaning” to their lives, which no doubt explains why more than half of the study’s participants said that their work brought little or no meaning to their lives.

The practical implications of this contradictionary behaviour can been seen in the responses the study’s participants gave about the impact the ability to do meaningful work would have on their performance.

When asked what differences would there be in their performance from being able to connect their passions and personal interests with their work, over 90% of the study’s participants said that it would motivate them to work harder, that they would care more about their work, that it would reduce their stress levels regardless of their workload, and that it would make them feel more successful.

This disconnect between how employees view the importance of meaningful work and their accepting jobs without considering whether it is meaningful reveals a lack of clarity many employees have about how to connect what they do with what matters to them; of how to identify work that would provide them with a sense of meaning and purpose.

Although employees are certain of the value, importance, and positive impact doing meaningful work would have on their career and personal lives, most of them haven’t yet discovered what they should be doing to derive that sense of purpose.

Leaders often admit that one of the big challenges they face is how to provide the kind of talent development that will ensure employees remain invested in their organization’s shared purpose. This study’s finding reveals a fertile opportunity for leaders to help their employees gain greater clarity about what matters to them, and how it can be tied to what they do as members of your organization.

3. Be prepared for the salary motivation bubble
For a study on the importance of meaningful work, one of the seemingly unexpected findings is how 60% of respondants listed salary as the most important factor for job satisfaction, with meaningful work coming in second place with 34%.

Of course, in light of the prevailing economic uncertainties seen in most countries, it’s not surprising that salary would rank so high, which also means that we need to recognize that we’re on borrowed time when it comes to using salary to keep our employees satisfied.

Indeed, this study’s findings reveal that salary bubble is already looming – almost 70% of respondants said they would be willing to take a pay cut in order to do work that allowed them to carry over their interests and passions from their personal life into the workplace. Additionally, more than one third of respondants stated that if every job in the world paid the same salary, they wouldn’t stay with their current position.

What’s more, Millennial employees were the most willingly to take a big pay cut in order to do work that connects with their personal passions and interests – 43% of this generation of workers said they would take a pay cut of 25% or more in order to do meaningful work.

This last finding is particularly noteworthy, not just because the Millennials represent the largest generation of workers to enter the workplace in the last few decades, but also because of their willingness to take such a significant pay cut even though they are at the low-end of the pay scale.

In light of these findings, it’s easy to understand why employee mobility is currently rather low, but it also serves as a warning for organizations to not rely on salary offerings to prevent an exodus of employees – especially the key talent within their organization – when economic conditions improve.

In reviewing the various findings and data from this study, there’s no question that there’s a clear need and interest among employees in all age groups and career stages to have the opportunity to contribute in a meaningful and purpose-driven fashion.

Perhaps equally important is how these findings reinforce the relationship-based nature of today’s work – where employees need to collaborate with leaders to not only identify where they can provide the greatest contribution, but to also identify and facilitate the kind of work environment and opportunities they need to succeed and grow.

Such an approach will serve not only employees, but the organizations they work for by ensuring their collective ability to evolve and thrive in the years ahead.

The post Making The Case For Creating Meaningful Work appeared first on TanveerNaseer.com.

The following is a guest post by Doug Sundheim.

When I talk to clients about effective goal setting someone invariably mentions that good goals are SMART goals – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. I agree these are critically important to strengthening goals. But they’re not the whole story. They don’t tell you how an individual or team arrived at the goal. And that’s more than half the battle.

Anyone can slap a specific, measurable, and achievable number on things and give you a due date. “We’ll have 6 new clients by the end of the quarter!” Great, but how did you arrive at that goal? Did you really think through it or does it just sound good? More often than not I find it’s the latter.

And more often than not I find people lose steam in pursuing their goals if they don’t go through a thoughtful goal setting process to arrive at them and keep them alive.

I’ll share an example of what I mean…

Recently, a client, the CEO of a medium-size accounting firm, sent me the following list of 2013 goals

• Revenue in excess of $200M
• Capitalize on our potential in our manufacturing practice and grow it 15% this year
• Increase our share in the finance practice by 10% this year
• Build a healthcare practice finding at least 2 new clients this year over $1M each
• Make our new office in Dallas a success increasing revenue and headcount by 50% by the end of the year
• Develop a global strategy by June 2014
• Initiate long term reduction in overhead cost such that overhead is not greater than 25% of planned revenue

On first glance they were an impressive set of goals, and they were everything SMART goals should be—specific, measurable, time bound etc. But then I started push a little. My first question was, “how were these created?” The CEO didn’t have a clear answer. They were his gut senses from what he felt the firm should be doing.

“OK, so is the entire executive team aligned on them?” I followed up.

“I think so,” he answered. It didn’t seem very convincing to me, but knowing he’d be sharing them with the entire executive team the next day, I let it slide.

The next day at the executive meeting, people started asking all sorts of questions:

How would you actually define our manufacturing practice?

Do you really think we can grow it that much? Is that where we should be putting our resources?

Who’s running the healthcare practice?

I thought we decided that we would hold off on that until 2014?

Did someone make a decision I wasn’t aware of?

Do you really think we should be growing headcount as fast as revenue in Dallas?

My gut tells me that we should staff the business out of other offices until 2014 so our costs don’t get ahead of our revenue.

There were 5-10 elements of the goal plan that should have gone through a much more rigorous vetting and consultation process before they ended up on the list. Instead they were created in a relative vacuum. I wish I could say this is the exception, but unfortunately it’s very common.

The problem is that it takes time and energy to really think through the implications of a set of goals and facilitate a thoughtful process to vet them. As a result, a lot of people take shortcuts. Sometimes, you can get away with it if you’re a small group people or the goals are simple, but for the most part, it creates big problems.

When goals aren’t thoughtfully defined, people don’t feel invested in them. Then the goals don’t stay front and center in their minds. And then people don’t hold each other accountable for hitting them.

Here are 11 questions I always keep in mind as I work with clients to set goals. It starts with some of the SMART elements, but goes beyond them. These are written from a leader’s perspective, but you can use them to strengthen individual goal setting as well. The more “yeses” you can answer, the better your goal setting process.

1. Are the goals specific and measurable – i.e. will it be clear we did or didn’t hit them?
2. Are the goals time bound?
3. Was the process of setting them inclusive of key stakeholders? If not, you could have buy-in problems down the road.
4. Are the goals easy to understand?
5. Do the goals feel motivating and inspiring?
6. If a goal is big or broad, is it broken down into sub goals and strategies?
7. If a goal is conceptual, is it operationalized to clarify target behaviors?
8. Have the goals been communicated clearly to all involved in their pursuit?
9. Are the goals at the forefront of all we’re doing – i.e. driving agendas, conversations, planning
10. Do we revisit the goals at regular intervals to check progress, make changes?
11. Do we use the goals to hold ourselves and each other accountable?

This list above isn’t a panacea – after all setting goals is tough. However, I’ve found it’s a great checklist to ensure your goals have power, and a greater likelihood of success.

Doug Sundheim is a leadership and strategy consultant with over 20 years experience in helping leaders drive personal and organizational growth. His latest book is Taking Smart Risks: How Sharp Leaders Win When Stakes are High. You can also follow Doug on Twitter @DougSundheim and find out more about his services at www.clarityconsulting.com.

The post There’s More To Goal Setting Than Making Them SMART appeared first on TanveerNaseer.com.

The following is a guest post by Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson.

Is your employee a risk-taker, or does he avoid risks like the plague? Does she get uncomfortable with too much optimism or praise, or is she known for her sunny outlook? Do some assignments always seem particularly hard for her, while she excels at others naturally?

The answers to these questions give you a window into your employee’s motivational focus – something every leader needs to understand in order to give feedback and create incentives that are persuasive and motivating.

There are two ways to look at the goals we pursue at work (and in life). Let’s start with a goal many of us share: “doing my job well.” For some of us, doing our jobs well is about the potential for advancement, achievement and rewards. It’s about what we might gain if we are successful, how we might end up better off. If you are (or your employee is) someone who sees goals this way, you have what’s called a promotion focus.

For the rest of us, doing our jobs well is about security – about not losing everything we’ve worked so hard for. When you are prevention focused, you want to avoid danger, fulfill your responsibilities, and be someone people can count on. You want to keep things running smoothly.

What’s important to know is that promotion and prevention-focused people work very differently to reach the same goal. They use different strategies, have different strengths, and are prone to different kinds of mistakes. One group will be motivated by applause, the other by criticism. One group may give up too soon – the other may not know when to quit.

The key to helping your team reach their goals your goals is to identify their focus, and learn to work with it instead of against it.

What’s Their Focus?

There are online assessments you and your employees can take to identify your motivational focus, but you can also get a pretty good sense of it by comparing any employee’s behavior to each of the following descriptions:

Promotion People are…

• Creative and innovative
• Comfortable taking chances
• Optimistic
• Speedy workers
• Good at seizing opportunities
• (Downside: They are also more likely to make mistakes, less likely to have a back-up plan if things go wrong, bad with details, and more likely to take a risk that lands them in hot water.)

Prevention People are…

• Great planners
• Deliberate, thorough
• Cautious, skeptical
• Accurate workers
• Analytical, good at evaluating
• (Downside: They are also more likely to miss out on great opportunities, get too bogged down with details, and have a tendency to be overly-anxious.)

Working With Focus

Studies show that the way to be most effective in leading your team is to understand how they work best, and use the strategies that match each individual’s particular motivation. Here is a sample of what I mean:

Feedback

When your employee is promotion-focused, their motivation feels like eagerness – an enthusiastic desire to really go for it. So encourage them to be optimists, and provide frequent praise (though only when it’s deserved, of course). Confidence heightens their energy and intensity. Doubting themselves takes the wind right out of their sails.

When your employee is prevention-focused, their motivation feels like vigilance – they are always on the lookout for danger. Vigilance actually increases in response to negative feedback or skepticism. There’s nothing like the looming possibility of failure to get their prevention juices flowing. Over-confidence or effusive praise, however, may lead them to let down their guard, and undermine their motivation – so beware of both. Offer honest, realistic feedback and focus on ways to improve performance.

Decision-Making

Allow your employees to make decisions in the way that feels right for them. Promotion-focused people make the best decisions when they weigh the relative pros of Option A and B, when they think about why something is worth doing, and when they trust their instincts.

The prevention-minded, on the other hand, prefer to weigh the cons of Option A & B, and go with lesser of two evils. They make the best decisions when they think about how something could be done, and when they can point to rational reasons, rather than feelings, to justify their choices.

Problem-Solving Approach

Expect your promotion employees to be more exploratory and abstract in their thinking. They generate lots of options and possibilities when coming up with ways to reach goals – they are creative, and always consider alternatives.

Prevention-focused thinking is concrete and specific – they will pick a plan and want to stick to it. Prevention people drill down to the details, and focus on the nitty gritty of what’s still needs to be done. And they are more comfortable with tried-and-true methods rather than “innovative” but untested ones.

Incentives

Promotion-focused employees are more motivated by incentives that are framed as gains or reward. If you meet this sales target, you will get a bonus. If generate a certain amount of new business, then you get a Caribbean vacation.

Prevention-focused employees care more about hanging on to what they already have, so frame incentives as opportunities to lose. Everyone gets a bonus this year, except those who fail to meet their sales target. Everyone on the team gets a Caribbean vacation, except those who generate too little new business.

Which Focus is the Best Focus?

People always want to know – is it better to be promotion or prevention focused? The truth is, both kinds of motivation can bring you success, and each has its pitfalls. Each brings something of value (e.g., bold solutions, attention to detail) to your organization. In fact, no organization can truly thrive without a balance of promotion and prevention motivation – to keep you moving forward, while maintaining the progress you’ve already made.

As a leader, be sure to appreciate and recognize the value of your promotion and prevention-minded team members, and help each of them to work in ways that bring out their very best.

Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson is the Associate Director for the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University Business School. Heidi is also a regular contributor to Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, WSJ.com, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Psychology Today and SmartBrief’s SmartBlog on Leadership.

Her latest book, co-written with Tory Higgins.is “Focus” Use Different Ways of Seeing The World For Success and Influence” is now available on Amazon.com (and Amazon.ca for Canadian readers).

The post Is Your Team Promotion Or Prevention-Focused? Here’s Why It Matters To Leaders appeared first on TanveerNaseer.com.

Are we giving away our power when we show up at work? It’s a question that came to mind following a thought-provoking conversation I had with Kathy Caprino about a recent piece she had written about tapping into our power to achieve a sense of happiness and fulfilment.

Through our discussion, I began to wonder how many of us experience moments where our knowledge, experiences, and insights tell us that the ideas and plans being put forth are missing key details, but we don’t speak up for fear that others will see us – and not their plan or idea – as being problematic.

Although it might be fear that prevents us from taking action and becoming full participants instead of passive observers, the bigger issue is how in each of these moments we’re giving up our power at work.

Now for many of us, this might sound odd. After all, how much power or influence can I possibly have given my place in the organizational organogram, or how much money I have stashed away in my savings account? Surely those in positions of authority and those among the wealthy class have far more power to wield, and consequently more influence to direct what course my organization or my community might take?

The problem, though, is that it’s not a question of position or wealth. Rather, it’s about recognizing that we need to shift our perception of power from the previous and clearly unsustainable survival-of-the-fittest model, to one that’s based on viewing power in terms of each of us having the means and the ability to contribute meaningfully and to be valued.

This requires that we redefine power beyond the scarcity model of positional power and wealth to a more reflective one where the focus is more on what we bring to the collective table – of how through committing ourselves to do the work we were meant to do we can make a difference and be impactful.

Unfortunately, many of us have been beaten back and pushed to our limits doing work that seems to have little benefit beyond the narrow scope of a few months or even weeks, not to mention a lack of connection to what matters to us.

And so, we end up checking ourselves at the door, leaving behind that inner capability that exists within each of us – the collective talents, experiences and genius that so many organizations desperately need if they are to do more than survive, but thrive in the years ahead.

At the same time, though, we need to understand that by treating power as a scarce commodity that is based on external factors such as our position at work or in our community, we literally take the power out of our own hands because we designate the permission to be able to use our power on factors that are beyond our control.

Certainly, history is replete with examples of people who grew tired of the status quo and elected to use their own power – their gift of words, their inner sense of courage and integrity, even their physical or mental fatigue with the current realities around them – to take what was at first a quiet stand against what is, in favour of what could be. A stand that inevitably rallied those around them who also saw and believed in that vision of what could be, instead of accepting what they experience today.

In each case, these individuals were not people of positional power or wealth. On the contrary, they were often members of the disenfranchised and those who were viewed by their contemporaries as being unworthy of attention or focus. And yet, from our comfortable perch in the present, we tend to place most of them on pedestals, heralding them as being exceptional people who displayed a unique capacity for envisioning a better future in the face of a seemingly unyielding status quo.

While they were certainly remarkable and in their own ways unique, the fact is that their actions were not borne of exceptionalism or uniqueness. Rather, it came from that internal recognition that within each of us there is a power to affect change and to make a difference through how we live our lives and what we contribute to those collective efforts we commit ourselves to, whether it be in our workplaces or in the communities we live in.

Once they came to that understanding, they realized that it’s more a waste to not put that power to use than to worry about what we might lose by putting ourselves out there.

More than any inspirational quote of theirs, perhaps that is the most important message and key component of their legacy – that we should not choose to believe that power is something beholden to a few based on position or wealth, but that it’s a force for change and creating value that exists in each of us to use for the benefit of the greater good.

Of course, in uncertain and challenging times, it’s easy to understand why so many of us long for courageous leaders who can help lead the way or at least shine a light on how we can get through the fog and back onto more firmer ground.

While there is certainly a need for courageous leadership, we should be careful not to confuse courage for bravado or the sheer force of will. Rather, courage arises from a clear sense of purpose grounded with the integrity to commit to realizing it in concordance with one’s values.

In this light, we all have the capacity and opportunity to exhibit courageous leadership in the decisions and choices we make every day, of how we choose to show up to lead those under our care and of what we contribute of our talents, creativity, and insights towards a common goal.

Granted, many workplaces do not empower their employees to use their genius, creativity, and insights in order to help their organizations achieve their shared purpose. However, as technology continues to lower the competitive threshold, there can be no denying the reality that the key differentiator in the years ahead will be how much an organization’s leadership is capable of facilitating and empowering their employees to bring their full selves to work.

The only question that remains is how willing will we be to accept our ownership of our own power and of committing like those trailblazers we all admire to using that power within us to contribute meaningfully to a purpose that’s greater than ourselves.

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Have you ever noticed how when someone tells us how they’ve been really busy with work, we automatically interpret this as being a bad thing? Certainly, no one associates having a lot of work to do with sunshine, love, happiness or any other positive experience.

In many ways, this is a natural product of both our schooling and work experiences, where we’re not guided and supported to use our genius, creativity, and talents in order to do the work we should do. Rather, what is the more common experience is being funnelled through a system that puts us into neat slots like gears in a complex piece of machinery.

When it comes to work, we’ve come to accept the concept of ‘no pain, no gain’ as being the proper route to success and prosperity. That we need to tough it out in the hopes that – someday – we might finally be able to do what we want to do because we’ve ‘paid our dues’.

To make matters worse, even if we are lucky enough to do work we enjoy, that sense of satisfaction tends to be short-lived as we’re rarely given the space to grow and evolve, with the freedom to make mistakes without being blackballed a failure and someone no longer worthy of development or the attention of those in charge.

And so, we inevitably hunker down, hoping that someday our ship will come in as a reward for all the sacrifices we’ve made, and we’ll finally get to live the life we always wanted and do the work that we’ve dreamed about doing all those many years ago.

No doubt this is why so many insurance and retirement planning companies rely on images of retired couples lounging on a boat off some tropical island, or taking up salsa dancing lessons before enjoying a night on the town.

In each instance the message is clear – we can live the life we really want . . . but only after we’ve committed to giving the best part of our lives today to doing work that might not be what we had planned or should be doing.

In this light, it’s not too surprising why we’ve created a negative connotation around the word ‘work’, whether it’s as a verb or a noun.

Of course, there’s a truth that we need to come to terms with if we are to truly succeed and thrive – both professionally and personally – and that is that we’re not making sacrifices. We’re making choices. Bad choices. Safe choices. Choices that those around us tell us are the ‘smart’ ones to make, but are often not the best ones for us to choose.

I know I’ve made a few of those in my past – choices I made to help pay the bills while waiting for that opportunity that I really wanted to show up. And that’s where we fall into the trap, because while we may have accepted these choices as temporary, they soon become the work we do and the life we live because we stop looking for that path that we were meant to take; of reconnecting with the work we were meant to do. We give up on such dreams in favour of pragmatism and familiarity of sticking to what we know instead of what we need.

To be clear, this isn’t about simply ‘doing what we love’. It’s about learning to love what we do because it provides us with a sense of fulfilment. That our work becomes more than simply a means of survival and living, but a way for us to employ our talents, our genius, and our creativity and drive towards something meaningful and purpose-driven.

While the growing levels of anxiety, fear and stress we see in today’s workplaces are partly due to the prevailing uncertainties surrounding the global economy, it is also a manifestation of that disconnect between what we do and why we do it.

And it’s becoming clear as we move further into this century that this approach to our careers and lives is no longer sustainable; that we’ve reached a tipping point where people can no longer be expected to feel happy or fulfilled by working to live. Instead, we need to shift the paradigm to one where people live to work.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the sole reason for our lives is our work; that answering the typical question ‘what do you do for a living’ serves to define the sum total of our existence. Rather, it means that we need to be more mindful in ensuring that the work we do is aligned with our internal compass that guides us to finding our purpose and our ability to contribute meaningfully.

That as much as we’re helping our organization to attain its shared goals, we’re also performing work that helps us to achieve a sense of purpose – that what we contribute matters and is meaningful beyond our sphere of influence.

In the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egyptologists have found carved in the stone blocks the names of some of the work teams that helped to build this monument. The carvings were never meant to be seen by others. Instead, they were made simply to demonstrate the workers sense of accomplishment and purpose that they derived from the simple, but back-breaking work of hauling these large stones into place.

Their example serves as a testimony that we don’t need to ‘have it all’ to feel a sense of fulfilment or achievement. Rather, all that’s required is our willingness to no longer play it safe or waiting until later to commit our creativity, our passions and our dreams to that which not only creates meaning for others, but which also instills a sense of purpose and fulfilment within ourselves.

This piece was originally published on Deb-Mills Scofield’s blog.

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Most of us understand that to be successful in leadership, we need to be aware of what and how we communicate. Of ensuring that we actively listen to what those around us are saying, and sometimes what they’re not saying. And yet, how many of us are also mindful of how we show up in these moments, of how present and engaged we are in those conversations with those we lead?

It’s a thought that came to mind after attending the HCI Human Capital Summit last week. Although the focus of the conference was on HR practitioners, there were some interesting insights shared on leadership and understanding how we interact, engage and empower those under our care in this increasingly complex and uncertain global economy.

1. Getting out of your own head to see the perspective of others
With the release of his latest book, “To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others”, the theme of Dan Pink’s presentation was on getting us to rethink our understanding of selling and with it, the recognition that this is now a function of everyone’s job in this age of “information parity”.

What was particularly noteworthy about Dan’s talk was his discussion on perspective taking – where “you get out of your own head and see the perspective of others”. Although Dan’s focus was on how this can help us to do a better job selling an idea, product or service, this concept also plays a key role in how we show up in those interactions with those we lead.

For example, Dan shared research findings which has shown that the correlation between power and perspective taking is inversely related. In other words, the more power we have, the less we look out to see and understand the perspective of others.

Additionally, researchers have also found that when someone is made to feel more powerful by getting them to focus on themselves – on their accomplishments and/or their responsibilities – their perspective taking is significantly lowered. Experiments have shown that all it takes is 90 seconds of increasing someone’s perception of their own power to dramatically reduce their ability to take into consideration the perspective of others.

So with this in mind, how can leaders ensure that in these conversation moments, they’re not only focusing on their perspective, but that they’re being open to seeing the perspectives of those they lead? Ironically, one of the ways leaders can increase their effectiveness in perspective taking is by reducing their power.

Specifically, you can increase your perspective taking capability by decreasing your feelings of power – by not going into the conversation saying ‘We don’t have time to discuss this. I just need you to get this done’. Instead, you need to involve your employees in the process, asking them for their insights to reveal what they will gain from the action, instead of simply looking at it in terms of what you will gain.

Indeed, another research finding Dan shared was how negotiators who kept in mind the thoughts and interests of the other party ended up with a much better, mutually beneficial deal than those who didn’t.

So while the fast-changing and increasingly competitive environment might seem to demand a greater urgency on most fronts, these findings make it clear that we need to be mindful of how our power – whether real or perceived – can impact how we show up in those interactions with those we lead and with it, our ability to see beyond ourselves to understand the needs and perspectives of those we serve.

2. How leaders unconsciously create stress in their employees
One of the speakers I was looking forward to hearing from was Liz Wiseman, who was a recent guest on my show “Leadership Biz Cafe”. During her talk, she got two volunteers from the audience to re-enact the famous story of the Swiss folk hero William Tell, who had to shoot an apple off the head of his son with a crossbow to save both of their lives. One participant was told to stand still as though they had an apple on their head while the other was positioned as though she was aiming a crossbow.

At this point, Liz polled the audience to ask what they thought these two characters must have been feeling at this moment. For William Tell, the consensus was that he must have felt pressured to live up to his reputation as a top marksman for fear that his son would die, either at his hands or at the hands of those who put the father and son in this situation.

But what was interesting was what Liz revealed through this exercise about what William Tell’s son must have felt – stress, brought on by the fact that he had no control over his fate. While his dad could at least be responsible for his ability to summon his courage to focus on hitting the target and saving both of their lives, his son was nothing more than a passive participant waiting to see what the outcome will be.

At the end of this exercise, Liz turned to the audience and asked how often do we as leaders put our employees in a stressful situation in response to our being pressured. Of course, most of us would like to think that it’s external factors like the economy that are creating stress for our employees.

And yet, as this exercise by Liz clearly illustrates, many times the stress we feel at work can arise from feeling a lack of control and with it, a lack of connection between our efforts, our organization’s goals and what matters to us personally.

That’s why creating a sense of ownership in your collective efforts, of demonstrating a shared purpose becomes key. Even though they can’t control or know everything, your employees can still be in control of something in their domain.

This sense of ownership in their contributions will open them up to committing their full selves to the process because it’s no longer a question of who will succeed – ‘us’ or ‘them’. Rather, the focus is on what do we need to do together in order to collectively succeed.

3. Understanding what your employees’ real strengths are
As part of his presentation, Stuart Crabb, Head of Learning at Facebook, shared a video Marcus Buckingham created for the employees at Facebook to explain how they should view their competencies and contributions. During this short video, Marcus makes this fascinating point:

Your strengths are not what you’re good at; your weaknesses are not what you’re bad at.”

Now, most of us understand the value of focusing on building our strengths instead of trying to continually compensate for our weaknesses. And yet, how many of us are truly aware of what our strengths are? In other words, how many of us confuse what our strengths are with what we’re good at? And conversely, how many of us assume that our weaknesses are what we don’t do well?

As Marcus elaborates in his video, our strengths are not simply what we’re good at; rather, it’s what strengthens us. It’s being able to do work which, while exhausting or challenging or even difficult, lights a fire within us. That it makes us feel like we’re contributing in a meaningful fashion; that we’re making a difference.

As leaders, what are you doing to understand what really matters to your employees? Of gaining greater clarity about the kinds of responsibilities, opportunities, or tasks that would stretch your employees, make them feel empowered and that they’re growing?

In other words, when you show up as a leader, do you play to the true strengths of your employees or do you simply assign them roles that reflect what you perceive them to be good at?

Throughout the conference, there was a common theme that looking forward, the biggest challenge organizations will face is finding and retaining people who have the talents and insights they require to grow and evolve. And in that vein, there was the understanding that employees recognize that the salary and perks that some organizations will use to attract them can be found just as easily elsewhere.

Consequently, the focus for employees becomes less about what an organization can offer them in terms of perks and financial compensation and more about what do they stand for – what are their values, what defines their culture and perhaps most importantly, why they do what they do and how they can contribute meaningfully to that purpose.

To that end, it becomes all the more critical that leaders are not only be able to communicate and exemplify those values and ideas, but that they also exhibit a greater sense of mindfulness about how they show up to empower and guide their employees’ collective talents, creativity, and insights towards achieving their shared purpose.

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