Many organizations have invested in some form of psychometric instrument that indicates whether people have a preference for introverted or extroverted behaviour, but that hasn’t stopped the vast majority of people from throwing around these terms without actually having a clue as to what they mean.

People hear “extrovert”, and they think: outgoing, friendly, social, capable, productive, normal.

People hear “introvert”, and they think: shy, withdrawn, anti-social, illusive, dysfunctional, wall-flower.

The problem with these descriptions is that neither is particularly accurate, and it infers that people are capable of only one set of behaviours exclusively.  There is also a connotation that Extroverts will excel in business to a much higher degree than Introverts.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins reveals the qualities that his research has shown as effective in running great organizations.  Interestingly, many of the qualities of “Level Five Leadership”, are found more naturally in people with Introverted preferences.

You might also be surprised who may be a closet-introvert:  High-profile leaders, television personalities, sports stars, maybe even one of your friends, neighbours, or family are introverted.  They’re everywhere, so beware – you never know when they’ll want to slink into the back corner of a meeting room, and silently wish everyone would stop talking at once.  Or perhaps pray that someone will listen to them for 20 seconds before interrupting them.  Worse yet, they may think about something before responding to a question creating that awkward few seconds silence.

So you may be wondering where I fit on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Grid.

As someone who spends a lot of time talking to groups of people, and a person who worked in television (for a short and spectacularly unsuccessful period of time), I am rarely accused of being an Introvert.

I prefer to label myself as a Recovering-Extrovert.  We might need to create a new scale for measurement.

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Listen to the ‘ABC’s of Performance Management’ Podcast

People do what gets reinforced (this is both a good news and a bad news story)!  Here’s how you can use consequences to manage performance.

The ABC’s of Performance Management

For more information, take a look at ‘Bringing Out the Best in People: How to Apply the Astonishing Power of Positive Reinforcement’, by Aubrey C. Daniels

Activator (or antecedent)

• Something that comes before a behaviour or activity which sets the occasion for that behaviour
• Most often over-used by managers
• Have only short-term effects
• Cause a behaviour to happen a limited number of times
• Must be paired with a consequence to be effective

Behavior

• What a person does
• Performance
• Action
• Event
• Decision

Consequences

• The result of a behavior
• A response to an action
• What is said or done about someone’s work or an activity
• An event that occurs after a given behavior
• What happens to the performer as a result of the given behavior

Leaders often overuse activators and underuse consequences.

Types of Consequences

There are four types of consequences:

• Positive reinforcement – Makes me feel good about something I’ve done
• Negative reinforcement – I do something because it will allow me to avoid something negative
• Punishment – Makes me feel bad about something I’ve done
• Extinction – Being ignored for something I’ve done

Positive and negative reinforcement are consequences that will increase behavior, while punishment and extinction are consequences that will decrease behavior.

Consequences That Drive Performance

Consequences can be:

• Positive  OR Negative
• Immediate  OR Future
• Certain  OR Uncertain

The consequences that will drive performance are positive, immediate, and certain.

Related Topic Bundles

Effective Meetings

Giving and Receiving Feedback

How to Get Good Information From Others: Asking the Right Questions

The One on One Meeting

Action Planning

Dealing with Performance Issues

Sign up here become a member and get full access to additional material about High Impact Development. Of course, it’s free.

Listen to the ‘High Impact Development’ Podcast

The most significant development for managers and executives takes place ON THE JOB (i.e. not through training or coaching/mentoring).  However training is what is most commonly offered.

Why most training is useless:

• 86% of people who attend training do nothing to apply what they have learned
• Typically only 10% of non-customized course content is relevant to an organization

Don’t default to training activities for yourself or your directs when building development plans!  If you do use training, think about what you are going to do to ensure that what is taught is actually applied.

High impact development activities include:

• Special project/Task force: Discrete project assignment aimed at a specific outcome.
• Fix-it: Turn around, restructure and stabilize a failed operation, project, or organization, or customer relationships.
• Start-up: Building something from nothing or almost nothing.
• Small strategic assignment: Examples include doing a competitive analysis; writing a proposal for a new product, system, etc.; writing a speech for someone higher up; writing a policy statement or summarizing a new trend/technique and presenting it to others.
• Deepening functional skills: Changing from a generalist type assignment to a more specialized job/role that requires/builds very deep functional expertise.
• Stretch job beyond ‘hip pocket’ functional skills: Changing job/role/career to a functional discipline fundamentally different from previous work experiences; may include a cross-functional assignment.
• Significant change leadership: Leading the efforts to design and implement major change to the company’s key business processes and core capabilities.
• Mentoring: Receiving personal coaching, counsel and perspective from a valued/trusted and influential leader.  Being a mentor for someone else.
• Build a team: Assembling & aligning a team of unique talent and skill sets to achieve a stated vision and strategy.  Maybe a project team.
• Coaching assignments: Teach someone how to do something they are not expert in; design a training course.

Related Topic Bundles

Effective Meetings

Giving and Receiving Feedback

How to Get Good Information From Others: Asking the Right Questions

The One on One Meeting

Action Planning

Dealing with Performance Issues

Sign up here become a member and get full access to additional material about Conducting an Interview. Of course, it’s free.

Listen to the ‘Conducting an Interview’ Podcast

Three things to remember about interviews:

1. Don’t underestimate the importance the importance of interviews, and the risk of doing it badly
2. Don’t wing it.  Prepare in advance, and follow up afterwards
3. Think of an interview as a way to establish a good match between an individual’s skills and the competencies required for a position

A good interview process greatly improves the chances of landing the best possible hire.  This is critical because turnover is expensive.

A bad interview is an inquisition that provides the illusion of power to the interviewer and a high level of anxiety to the candidate – “tell me about your strengths and weaknesses….”

A great interview is a mutually respectful conversation that determines the quality of the match between a candidate’s skills and the competencies required for a specific position.

Before the Interview

Know what you’re interviewing for:

• Start with an up-to-date job description.  If one doesn’t exist, create one
• Who do we want – What skills? What knowledge? What experience?
• What corporate fit – What attitudes? What outlooks?
• Do we have realistic expectations?
• Don’t chase the ‘hit the ground running’ myth

Now that you’ve got a stack of resumes:

• Score and rank all resumes and choose a limited number to telephone interview (no more than 10)
• Conduct a telephone ‘mini-interview’ to wean down the list further
• Remember cultural fit and what makes people in your team successful
• Look for clues: career ADD, cover letters, relevant experience

Prepare the candidate for the interview:

• Let them know in advance who they are going to see
• Let them know in advance what the process will be
• Consider providing some or all of the questions to the candidate in advance

Prepare yourself for the interview:

• Remember you and the company are being assessed in this process as well
• Read the resume in advance
• Come with a list of questions:
  • Create questions that are based on the key needs identified in the job description
  • Design questions that build understanding
  • Use both open-ended and closed-ended questions
  • Use situational questions – “What would you do if you were given a project timeline that you knew you could not meet?”; “What would you do if you had a direct conflict with another employee?”
  • Use behavioral questions – “Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer.  How did you handle it and what was the outcome?”; “Describe a time when you had to sacrifice your own goals for the good of the team”
• Answer the questions yourself.  What do you need the answers to be?  Write down what themes you would like to see in a candidate’s responses.
• Book an appropriate location for the interview
• Try to have at least one other person present in the interview

During the Interview

Attempt to keep the interview informal but professional.  Be respectful and professional.  Turn off your blackberry!

Interview format:

• Introduction
• Explain the process
• Ask your questions
• Describe the job
• Let them ask questions
• Indication of next steps and timeline
• Close

Assessing a candidate’s responses:

• Do you believe them?
• Are they just saying what they think you want to hear?
• Make sure you challenge the role they actually played and how much they were responsible as opposed to being part of a team’s success
• Challenge if you are not convinced

Bring to a close:

• Provide a realistic estimate of decision time and stick to it
• If you are keen on them, ask them to let you know if their circumstances change in the interim
• Don’t promise anything until you have seen all the candidates

After the Interview

Remember that your intuition is a powerful tool in the interviewing process but it is not the only one – you should score and rank each interview performance.

Consider:

• What skills are nice to have, and what can be taught?
• Where are you comfortable to compromise?
• What is not up for negotiation

Be sure to call all the candidates (even the unsuccessful ones) to let them know when a decision has been made.

Related Topic Bundles

Effective Meetings

Giving and Receiving Feedback

How to Get Good Information From Others: Asking the Right Questions

The One on One Meeting

Action Planning

Dealing with Performance Issues

Sign up here become a member and get full access to additional material about Tools to Lead Change. Of course, it’s free.

Listen to the ’Tools to Lead Change’ Podcast

Three important things to remember when you are leading change

1. As individuals experience change, each one will deal with change differently.  In general though, people move through three predictable phases when confronted with change:

Stage One: ‘Endings’ – anger, denial, resistance, mourning

Stage Two: ‘Exploration’ – chaos, turmoil, hope

Stage Three: ‘New beginnings’ – new routines/methods, optimism, stability

You should expect employees to move through various emotions….even when things are going well!

2. Resistance arises when people realize that change is difficult

3. Your role is to keep people on track despite obstacles

Communicating to different personality types

We are each a ‘creature of habit’ and tend to act consistently over time and in different situations.

Various measurement systems can help you understand preferred styles of behavior – both your own, and those of others.  For example:

• Myers Briggs Type Indicator
• DiSC
• Insights

These personality profiles categorize how an individual prefers to:

• Direct their energy
• Process information
• Make decisions
• Manage himself in the world
• Deal with conflict
• Communicate
• Work in a team environment

To communicate effectively during change, it is critical to tailor your messages to the personality preferences of the individuals you are dealing with.

Dealing with Resistance to Change

You should expect resistance to change – this is normal!  As a leader, you can minimize resistance to change if you:

• Provide focus
• Proactively share information
• Acknowledge resistance when it occurs
• Tow the line
• Involve employees where possible
• Repeat key messages over and over
• Listen
• Validate good work done in the past

Sometimes, however, you will encounter continued resistance to change.  When confronted with difficult behavior, you can manage it if you:

• Be aware of the impact of the other person’s behavior on you
• Identify the type of behavior, and strategize a response before reacting
• Understand the root cause
• Determine if the conversation can continue right now
• Avoid public showdowns
• Focus on the behavior, not the person
• Don’t make excuses for the person
• Do something! – Don’t ignore the behavior

For more information about dealing with difficult behavior….

Also emotional behavior….

Also conflict dynamics profile

Related Topic Bundles

Effective Meetings

Giving and Receiving Feedback

How to Get Good Information From Others: Asking the Right Questions

The One on One Meeting

Action Planning

Dealing with Performance Issues

Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader: How You and Your Organization Can Manage Conflict Effectively (Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan)

“If workplace conflict is inevitable, becoming a conflict competent leader is one of the most valuable skill sets a leader can possess. Runde and Flanagan clearly lay out how destructive conflict can be prevented while fostering the kind of constructive debate and creative solutions which businesses need to thrive.”
—Joanne McCree, former vice president, human resources, IBM

Developing Your Conflict Competence: A Hands-On Guide for Leaders, Managers, Facilitators, and Teams (Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan)

A practical resource, this book combines tips, checklists, exercises, and stories to outline concrete processes that improve the way leaders, managers, and anyone within an organization responds to conflict. Beginning with a series of questions and self-diagnostics, the authors show you how to: maintain emotional balance in the face of conflict; implement constructive communications techniques; help others deal with conflicts that are causing organization problems; establish norms for handling conflict; use specific approaches for addressing conflict more effectively.

Building Conflict Competent Teams (Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan)

Understanding how to cool down, slow down, and engage the naturally occurring conflicts among team members is critical to the ultimate success of a team. With this book, your team and its members will gain a deeper understanding of how conflict emerges and how to respond in ways that will leverage conflicts to their advantage. Team members will learn the importance of establishing a safe team climate, agreeing on processes to guide interactions, and use of constructive communication skills in order to develop a conflict competent team.

As the authors say, conflict is not to be avoided, but embraced and explored. This often results in new, previously unimagined opportunities, solutions and results. The authors include stories, interviews, and examples that provide entertaining and thought provoking insights. They dedicate one chapter to techniques and processes for addressing team conflict that has gone awry. Runde and Flanagan also include useful tips and tools for assessing your team?s current state of conflict competence and suggestions for addressing the challenges of today?s virtual and geographically dispersed teams.

Listen to the ‘Presentation Skills’ Podcast:

Take a look at the ‘Improve Your Public Speaking and Presentation Skills‘ Complete Topic Bundle.

I have had the pleasure of interacting with many leaders of varying quality over many years, and all of them have at least a few obvious strengths, but the common denominator in the truly outstanding leaders, are those who handle awkward, difficult or downright scary situations head-on.  They don’t always get it right the first time, but the outstanding leader does not back down because she fears reprisal from her boss, peers, direct reports or some other stakeholder.

It is amazing how many people have a strong need to liked by those who report through to them.  The relationship between a boss and his/her employees should always be respectful, but it does not need to be friendly.  Many leaders hate to deliver bad news, or say “no” to people.  Other leaders won’t deal with performance issues because it might involve a difficult conversation, or let an employee who should have been fired years ago get away with perpetual sub-par performance.

This is exquisite BS.

It is a form of dishonesty, and certainly demonstrates a lack of integrity when leaders fail to engage in difficult conversations.  Progressive organizations have figured this out, and gotten rid of managers who are afraid to get rid of people.

The right thing to do is rarely the easy thing to do, but it is the burden of leadership.  If you are too chicken$hit to do the right thing, then you should either grow a pair, or wait to be fired.  The choice is yours

Listen to the ‘Giving Quality Feedback’ podcast:

Take a look at the ‘Giving Quality Feedback‘ Complete Topic Bundle

In the interest of full disclosure, I should come-clean now on the fact that I came late to the smart phone party.  I had a perfectly good cell phone, and no one was able to convince me that a smart phone would make my life any easier.  In fact – quite the opposite:

“You need a smart phone so you can get your email anywhere, and always be connected.  The only thing I don’t like is that my phone reception is not very good.”

Sorry – that’s at least two strikes against the smart phone

1)   I don’t want to always be connected.  In fact I look to actively be disconnected

2)   Why would I buy a phone with the limiting function being the telephone itself?  It might make a mean frappuccino, but I would prefer it to make phone calls.

I finally relented and bought an iPhone because it effectively condensed four devices I regularly carried on business trips into one (phone, iPod, Palm Pilot & GPS).  The bonus feature was that as a middle-aged white guy, I instantly felt cooler with a gadget from Apple.

So once I had the new smart phone was I perpetually connected, as I feared?  No.

Not because the technology limited me in any way from staying connected, but because I often either ignored it or turned it off.  I am able to do so because I’m not part of a big corporate food-chain where I would be lead to believe that my very existence on the planet is contingent upon me being absolutely indispensible to my employer.

As a contractor of services, I am generally exempt from things like anxiety about job security (because I don’t have any).  But it got me thinking about why people feel they need to be connected all the time.  It is nothing more than illusions of grandeur if you think that no one else can do what you do.  If you are one of the few that has made yourself indispensible then your business is not sustainable, and we should probably fire you anyway.

Either way, if you’re one of those managers that is constantly connected to your workplace, you should work to wean yourself off this addiction.  Work, like all other recreational drugs, should be used only in moderation.