by Jane Perdue | Be your best you
While working at Continental Cablevision (sadly they are no more), I had the honor and pleasure of working with Dr. Maurice (Moe) Olivier, founder of the Academy for Corporate Excellence.
As was his standard practice, Moe had created a customized leadership development program for us focused on the practices of exemplary leaders – using influence, managing change and leading transition, communicating and fostering the right work culture.
All terrific concepts from the content standpoint – yet meaningless if the course participants didn’t adopt, adapt and apply their learnings when they returned to work..
We’ve all probably heard the post-training observation that “yea, it was great stuff, but when I got back to work there was so much to do that I didn’t have time so I just kept on doing what I’d been doing.”
Our goal was to cut through that attitude. We wanted to create just the right amount of discomfort that would push people to expand their comfort zone. We wanted to create a mindset where new thoughts and actions would be internalized. Our solution for making that process visible: partners and a plant.
Partners and a plant
Why a plant? Plants need nurturing. Without light and water they die. Just as leadership principles do when they’re not applied.
We challenged the Leadership for Excellence participants to keep their plant—and key learnings—alive by taking and making time to care for the plant and to reflect on how they could keep their newfound leadership skills alive, too. I recently received an email from a course participant who told me that the plant helped him stay focused. He said a dead plant would have been a too obvious sign that he wasn’t keeping his training learnings alive!
Reflect on what you’re doing
Think back to the last training class you attended or to the last management or leadership book you read or the last mentoring session you had. Did you discover great content you wanted to use yet never found the time to make it happen? As with many things in life and leadership, you’re in the driver’s seat for expanding your comfort zone by incorporating new learnings.
3 ways to maximize the results of leadership training
In lieu of a plant, ponder these ways to push the walls of your post leadership training comfort zone:
1) Get a partner and hold each other accountable for applying just one learning principle. Make that learning nugget come to life – nurture the practice until it becomes second nature for you. Then move on to the next nugget.
2) Adopt the beginner’s mind each time you take a course or read a book to improve your knowledge, skills and abilities. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.
3) Embrace the both/and mindset: yes, I must handle all my normal work duties AND become a better leader by applying what I’ve learned.
And maybe, just maybe, buy yourself a plant as a visible reminder of what new things you will do and/or be.
What say you?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Paradox
I marvel at the amount of time spent:
…on seeking to define and/or differentiate leadership and management.
How about just doing the work; focusing on people, principles and results; and not get hung up on labels?
…trying to prove that a specific list of leadership characters traits is the one and only.
Perhaps we should agree that the list of worthy traits is long, that most are needed, and that our time will spent leading than in creating a finite list that tomorrow’s business needs will change?
…espousing that one can only lay claim to being a leader if they have followers.
How about agreeing to disagree and respecting each other’s opinion?
…vehemently asserting that leadership is only measured by results.
Can we agree to disagree on this one too, yet respect each other’s opinion?
…attempting to prove that managers do things right and that leaders do the right thing.
Can we say that supervisors, managers and leaders both do things right and do the right things?
Life is big, complicated, fun, challenging, and full of ambiguity. Right?! Know what else is big, complicated, fun, challenging, and full of ambiguity? Leadership, management, and supervision. Love, too.
Rarely is life, love and leadership an either/or end game. It’s really a both/and dance in which we balance, shift, and juggle as we manage the opposing, contradictory, and complementary elements of a longer term and big picture truth, which is–many things require us to manage the complexity of both/and, not the simplicity of either/or.
In Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras phrase it beautifully. They counsel us to “avoid the tyranny of the OR and embrace the genius of the AND.” Now that’s a beautiful way to dance!
What say you about the paradox-filled dance of leadership?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Paradox
“Kathleen was way out of line. Going to her boss to complain about her performance review was over the top. We had no choice but to write her up.”
“Why didn’t you have a choice?”
“We can’t have our executives burdened with such mundane matters.”
“Did Kathleen talk to her boss about her concerns?”
“Of course she told him about her disagreement during the review.”
“Anything after that?”
“She wrote a five-page letter two days after the review and asked for a follow-up meeting with her boss.”
“What happened in the follow-up meeting?”
“It hasn’t happened yet. We’ve kept her boss pretty busy with our annual business strategy and budget planning that’s done every year at this time.”
“How long has it been since Kathleen gave her follow-up letter to her boss?”
“Let’s see, we’ve spent the last two months really focused on the strategy and budget work. Her review was before that, so it’s been maybe three months.”
“Is that a normal time gap for your organization to respond to employee issues?”
“Well, maybe not normal but it certainly hasn’t been the longest. We’ll get to her issue when the budget planning work is over.”
Advice for a troubled management team
Oh, my goodness!
What a host of riches exist for making changes to improve process, better engage employees and even minimize the risk of legal action:
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- Consider an open door program so employees with issues have a place to go
- Revisit how priorities are set
- Provide training on balancing task completion and relationship building
- Have someone serve as the advocate for employees
- Conduct risk management training
What other going-forward advice would you offer this HR manager?
Image source before quote: morgueFile.com
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
“Tell me why you didn’t say anything to Kyle about his performance problems.”
“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
This feedback exchange happened during legal discovery in an unlawful termination lawsuit. Fed up with an employee’s ongoing failure to meet job requirements, the supervisor had fired him. The employee believed he was fired because he was older than the rest of his department.
If you supervise or manage others, candidly and caringly talking to people about their job performance is a must-have skill in your leadership toolkit.
I remember the first time I had to tell someone their job performance was missing the mark. I had postponed the discussion probably a dozen times. The time lag only made me more uncomfortable and dashed my secret hopes that the employee could/would read my mind and would miraculously start doing a better job…or gift me with their resignation letter given they’d found a better position.
As the possibility of that miracle receded further and further, I talked to a respected colleague. He asked me what I was afraid of.
“I’m afraid of hurting his feelings.”
“What will happen if his performance doesn’t get any better?”
“I’ll have to let him go.”
“What about his feelings then?”
Ooh!
My colleague went on to tell me that really good leaders talk frankly and frequently about performance with their employees. That those discussions come from a place of caring, not a place of belittlement or forced obligation (the form is due to HR stuff).
I jumped off the cliff and spoke candidly and compassionately with my employee. We talked about what he did well and what he did poorly. We explored things he needed to do better to improve his performance. There weren’t any threats or demands.
Giving honest feedback
As a leader, you own developing your people just you own production or sales numbers or whatever other metric is used as the yardstick to assess your work output. To make that happen:
Give your employees regular, ongoing coaching and feedback about how they’re doing because their insights, growth and performance evolve over time.
Be really specific in describing in good work and what needs to improve. Give feedback (high fives and otherwise) often so it becomes a normal practice for you to do and for your team to receive and respond. Build a culture in which your employees give feedback to each other as well. There’s nothing that says that feedback can only come from the boss!
Some examples:
- You need to be nicer to customers isn’t descriptive enough and is open to lots of interpretation. Say instead, Smile and make eye contact when you greet customers. Use a friendly tone of voice and ask how you can help them. That feedback paints a much clearer picture of what performance you expect.
- Saying Good job! is good recognition yet it doesn’t give enough specificity to help develop particular skills and/or behaviors. Great job on that presentation to the boss! You had all your facts, had analyzed them well, had anticipated her objections and was able to deflect her pushback with appropriate humor…well done! See the difference?
As for that employee who was my first “feedback guinea pig,” he thanked me for being upfront with him and went on to become a star performer.
What other tips and techniques have you experienced that worked well for you in giving honest and meaningful feedback?
by Jane Perdue | Character
During a recent leadership training session for VISTA (the domestic Peace Corps), we had a thoughtful discussion about leading and managing with courage.
Examples shared and discussed by these emerging young leaders included:
- speaking up to protest an action contrary to stated values
- deciding to take action based on information at hand that covered 90% of the situation without doing exhaustive analysis to get to the remaining 10% of the data
- providing input during a large meeting when you’re an introvert
- doing something that’s unpopular even though it’s the right thing to do
- bringing up the unspoken elephant in the room
- trying something new or taking a risk
- giving your boss feedback
A pretty impressive list for some courageous young people just beginning their leadership journey!
My hope: that these young people manage to hold on to their moral compass and courage when they join the workforce. There’s nothing like walking the tightrope of holding onto your first big job so you can make your car payments and working in a culture that stifles innovation and calling out the elephant in the room.
What’s your hope for these young leaders?
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Quotes about courage, bravery, and doing what’s right
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. ~e.e. cummings
Unless we discover actual truth, morality is up for grabs. ~Pamela Christian
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. ~Coco Chanel
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon
Courage is grace under pressure. ~Ernest Hemingway
Men are more moral than they think and for more immoral than they can imagine. ~Sigmund Freud
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ~André Gide
Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher“
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare. ~Maya Angelou
Morality is how you go about getting what you want without screwing anybody to get it. ~unknown
Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway. ~John Wayne
