by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Feeling like everyone but you is being promoted? Wondering why your team has lost its spark? Questioning how few people at work are interested in your ideas and opinions? If so, perhaps it’s time for a leadership practice checkup to assess how good you are at managing opposites.
Professor and author Michael D. Watkins offers seven topics for leaders to take into account as they assess their leadership practices. His seven methods require that we maintain an equilibrium between analytical thinking and conceptual mindsets—a fundamental necessity for leading and managing.
7 Questions for Managing Opposites
If your career growth and influence are stalled out, reflect on your answers to these seven questions that assess your skill in managing opposites.
- Are you working as a specialist or a generalist?
Vikram Mansharamani notes that “the future may belong to the generalist.” A fast-moving, quickly changing business environment requires the ability to deal with a broad range of uncertainty. “Ideological reliance on a single perspective appears detrimental to one’s ability to successfully navigate vague or poorly-defined situations (which are more prevalent today than ever before).”
- Are you thinking like an analyst or an integrator?
Successful leaders see a wide range of possibility, which may include actions that appear to be opposite. Strategy advisers Michael Sales and Anika Savage say that these individuals know “how to honor and weave together the thoughts and feelings of others with their own into a line of principled action.”
- Are you functioning as a tactician or as a strategist?
Big picture leaders get out of the day-to-day weeds so they can follow Peter Drucker’s advice for strategic planning: formulate the strategy, implement it, monitor results, and make adjustments.
- Are you engaged as a bricklayer or as an architect?
Leaders assure that “strategy, structure, operating models, and skill bases fit together effectively and efficiently, and harness this understanding to make needed organizational changes,” notes Watkins.
- Are you focused on being a problem-solver or an agenda setter?
Effective leaders know when to step back from being hands-on, aiming instead for shaping the long-term vision. Research from James M. Kouzes and Barry Posner reveals “being for forward-thinking — envisioning exciting possibilities and enlisting others in a shared view of the future — is the attribute that most distinguishes leaders from nonleaders.”
- Do you see yourself as a warrior or a diplomat?
Responding with tact and grace is the hallmark of a humble, win-win oriented leader who has learned to transcend ego. Individuals who have mastered the art and science of functioning this way are author Jim Collins describes as Level 5 leaders: “a study in duality: modest and willful, shy and fearless.”
- Do you position yourself in a cast member or leading role?
Everyone can be a leader even if they aren’t the in-charge leader. All it takes is a mix of daring, compassion, accountability, and a dollop of guts. Being overly meek and blending into the background doesn’t drive results or build engagement.
Savvy leaders recognize that all the combinations Watkins lists may be applicable in any given set of circumstances, ignoring the “or” and correctly applying what Collins calls the “power of the AND.” These smart leaders embrace possibility with openness, practice inclusion without judgment, turn dreams into reality, and inspire others to do the same.
Image credit (before quote added): Pixabay
by Paul Ratoff | Leadership
In the closing seconds of a tight basketball game, a smart coach will huddle with his players and draw up a play designed to result in a winning shot.
However, if a single teammate is disengaged, the play can go wrong, and the team falls short of victory.
Businesses have something in common with that basketball team.
A business needs a purpose, and each employee needs to be inspired by—and contributing to—that purpose. They need to buy-in.
If everyone in an organization feels good about the work they do and is committed to the organization’s purpose, then good results are likely to happen. But if workers fail to buy-in and aren’t engaged, their productivity suffers and the company as a whole pays the price.
For years, many companies chased quarterly earnings and ignored any overarching purpose beyond keeping shareholders happy. But to survive and thrive in today’s world, businesses need to think about more than just “shareholder value.”
Company leaders need to manage from the perspective of stakeholder value. Stakeholders include everyone who impacts the company or is impacted by it, from customers to suppliers to communities to employees.
Imagine if you could get employees to look at their jobs as something with a purpose that goes beyond just earning a paycheck. That purposeful orientation could result in a more engaged workforce, better productivity, and perhaps less turnover.
In fact, studies have shown that especially millennials seek purpose in their jobs and are quick to switch employers if they don’t find it.
Numerous companies have developed statements to define their purposes. Google wants to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Roche, a biotech company, states its purpose as: “Doing now what patients need next.”
Once a company defines its purpose, how does it get employee buy-in? By doing three things.
3 things to build employee buy-in to purpose
1) It starts at the top.
It’s not enough that employees find the purpose inspiring. The leader of the company must also be authentically inspired and inspiring. He or she has to get the entire management team enthusiastically on board.
You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. ~Ken Kesey
2) Make sure the purpose is clear and meaningful.
Company leaders must find a common purpose that’s broad enough to be meaningful and important to employees. In the absence of a clear organizational purpose, people focus on their individual goals and may perceive different purposes for the same organization.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. ~Sam Walton
3) Discard what doesn’t fit.
Identify company activities that aren’t aligned with the purpose and remove or transform them.
You cannot expect your team to rise above your example. ~Orrin Woodward
Purpose isn’t an idea that only lives in a strategic plan or on a website. It lives in the daily operation of a business and in the ongoing communications with stakeholders. And it lives as the internal compass for keeping a complicated organization with many competing interests on course.
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Today’s guest contributor is Paul Ratoff, author, management consultant, and president of Strategy Development Group Inc.
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Andi Simon | Leadership, Women
As women have taken on greater leadership roles in the business world, it’s paid off for both them and business.
A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that firms with women in the C-suite were more profitable. Meanwhile, the number of female-owned businesses grew 45 percent from 2007 to 2016 compared to just a 9 percent growth in the number of businesses overall.
But will all those women in leadership roles change the workplace culture to make it more female friendly—and does it matter?
The power of culture
As a corporate anthropologist, I’m aware of the recent shift in thinking surrounding how cultures should be restructured in order for women to thrive in the workplace. This has caused me to ask: What type of culture do women really want and is it that different from what men want, too?
The results of my research were surprising.
It turns out that, in many ways, men and women want similar things in the workplace. Both prefer a strong clan culture that emphasizes collaboration, teamwork and a focus on people.
So what lessons does that hold for women who start their own businesses or are hired or promoted into leadership positions in existing businesses?
3 things for female leaders to do
Based on my personal experiences, and what I’ve learned from female business leaders I’ve interviewed, some of the ways women can succeed when leading an organization and make the workplace more attentive to the needs of both men and women include:
1) Create a culture that blends work and home.
I talked with the founder of one company that intentionally took a whole-life approach and didn’t force employees to choose between work and family. That company won all sorts of local awards for being one of the best places to work in the area.
2) Encourage staff to be innovators.
Often even the employees who think outside the box are reluctant to act outside the box for fear of repercussions if things don’t work out quite the way they hoped. But for innovation to happen, a good leader needs to empower employees to try new ideas.
3) Be an adventurer, stay curious.
If you expect your employees to try new ideas, you need to be willing to do so as well. Don’t worry about failing. Keep tinkering and trying stuff and sooner or later you’ll hit upon your a-ha moment.
My research shows that the females who know how to create success are not just building better businesses; they are changing the way people work.
The corporate cultures in women-run businesses reflect the personal beliefs and values of the women leading them, and those businesses tend to be highly successful.
What’s been your experience running or working in a women-run business?
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Andi Simon, today’s guest contributor and the author of On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights, is a corporate anthropologist and award-winning author. She is the founder and CEO of Simon Associates Management Consultants, a public speaker, an Innovation Games facilitator and trainer, and a tenured professor of anthropology and American studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Image credit before quote added: Pixabay
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
There I was, jamming to the car radio while traveling to a meeting.
Paused at a stoplight, I glanced at the car to my right. The driver met my eyes, shook his head, and made the cuckoo gesture. I smiled and kept on singing.
Had this situation occurred earlier in my personal journey, I would have responded very differently. Feeling silly, self-conscious, and embarrassed, I would have prayed for the red light to be short.
Social convention—the law of opinion as philosopher John Locke calls it—says that “normal” people don’t behave that way! Back then, I would have stopped singing immediately because, as Locke puts it, the “threat of condemnation or disgrace from one’s fellows is a powerful motivation.” For most of us, being in situations in which we’re isolated, don’t fit in, or feel silly isn’t any fun at all.
The pressure to conform and the desire to belong are rooted deep in us, and together they can influence our actions.
Solomon Asch conducted research in which “subjects were asked to match lines of different lengths on two cards. In this experiment, there was one obvious right answer. However, each subject was tested in a room full of ‘planted’ peers who deliberately gave the wrong answer in some cases. About three-fourths of the subjects tested knowingly gave an incorrect answer at least once in order to conform to the group.”
Spiral of silence
Some times, in our desire to conform and fit in, we go further than changing an answer. When our point of view, opinion, or preference is in opposition to what the majority thinks, we sometimes choose to remain silent.
Political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann calls this behavior the spiral of silence. This spiral is especially potent when our opinions have a moral component—that’s us trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong.
As leaders, we may not enjoy being isolated or not fitting in, yet we can’t hesitate to go there.
Leaders marshal the courage to stand alone.
Leaders don’t allow themselves to be deterred from doing what’s right by the fear of being alone or not being liked.
Leaders being different
Effective leaders are mindful of not letting a desire to conform push them into the spiral of silence. To avoid letting that happen, they:
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- Make the tough calls no matter how unpopular those decisions may be.
- Hold people accountable so poor performance doesn’t fritter away potential.
- Pursue change knowing it is the path to ongoing relevance.
- Encourage purposeful discomfort in pursuit of personal and organizational growth.
- Ask the uncomfortable questions to ferret out the best solution and minimize bias.
- Ensure there is diversity not only of sex, race, and age but also of thought, opinion, and perspective so people can appreciate both sides of the bigger picture.
- Are self-aware, perpetually seeking to understand themselves to better understand others.
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. ~Audre Lorde, poet and activist
Effective leadership means delivering both results and relationships, which sometimes requires putting ourselves in the lonely—but necessary—place of speaking and acting differently.
We choose to march to the different drummer.
And give ourselves permission to (badly) sing our hearts out while behind the wheel.
What’s been one of the most troubling things you’ve seen happen when people choose to conform rather than break the spiral of silence?
Image source: Pixabay
by Kay Peterson | Leadership
Organizations, communities, governments, and even families want to create highly effective teams.
They are encouraged to include members with demographic diversity in order to tap the power of differences. But research shows that with demographic diversity alone, you may experience the messiness and process conflict that impact overall team performance.
Observable differences may oversimplify the variability in perspective and focus that contribute to real team effectiveness.
After all, what if all team members judge too early before setting a vision for an ideal outcome?
What if a majority of members are paralyzed by the need for perfection and never get results?
Instead of simply focusing on observable demographic factors, try looking intentionally at the deep diversity found in the learning styles described in How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life.
Research shows that this type of deep diversity is strongly related to conflict management and effective performance in teams.
To appreciate and cultivate style diversity in your teams, first develop a deep diversity within yourself by using all nine learning styles.
You’ll appreciate the strengths that each style offers and understand how overusing one approach or skipping it entirely impacts your success and limits your choices.
You’ll also appreciate the strengths of others whose preferences are different from your own.
9 learning styles that support diversity
Here are the nine styles and team roles to activate in yourself—and your teams–to summon the deep diversity that allows you to reach your full potential.
Experiencing style. Activate your Connector by engaging in relationships, staying in the present moment, and recognizing your feelings. Ask: “Am I present?”
Imagining style. Activate your Dreamer by imagining possibilities and generating new ideas about what might be. Ask: “What are the possibilities?”
Reflecting style. Activate your Observer by taking many perspectives and mulling things over patiently before taking action. Ask: “Am I listening carefully and seeing the whole picture?”
Analyzing style. Activate your Planner by organizing and structuring your environment and the information you need to consider. Ask: “Do I have structure in place to support me?”
Thinking style. Activate your Questioner by being a healthy skeptic to investigate and evaluate the facts. Ask: “What does the evidence prove?”
Deciding style. Activate your Judge by committing to one plan, setting a goal and knowing how you’ll measure progress. Ask: “Have I committed to an outcome?”
Acting style. Activate your Achiever by getting things done on time, even if you have limited resources. Ask: “Am I making things happen?”
Initiating style. Activate your Influencer by courageously taking the lead in the moment. Ask: “Do I seize new opportunities?”
Balancing style. Activate your Adapter to pivot when situations change or you identify gaps. Ask: “Do I adapt when priorities shift?”
You may notice that you favor some styles mainly because you’ve been successful using them. You develop a sweet spot through practice and operate in a habitual steady state. However, these preferences are not traits; you can build flexibility in styles that are unfamiliar to you through practice.
As you develop flexibility in all the learning styles, you’ll be activating your own internal team that will allow you to deploy all parts of you as a whole person and to focus on all steps in any process.
Meanwhile, to create teams with deep diversity, consider tapping people whose preferred styles are different from your own. The map of the nine learning styles will give your entire team a model to understand and appreciate their strengths and differences.
And, because the nine styles correspond to nine steps in the learning cycle or any other process (like decision-making, team work, and innovating), it will give you a process map to follow, too. If you don’t know what to do next, you can find where you are on the learning cycle and take the next step.
The deep diversity of the nine learning styles will make you more effective in any situation, and will help teams to harness the power and synergy of differences that matter most.
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Today’s guest author is Kay Peterson, co-author of How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life, founder of the Institute for Experiential Learning, board certified coach and organizational development consultant.
Image provided by author
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Do you know what practice makes for being an effective leader?? It’s not avoiding actions that make you uncomfortable.
To be a productive and persuasive leader, you have to do that which makes you uncomfortable. Then you do it again and again until you feel comfortable doing it.
You may never come to like giving negative performance feedback or making staff reductions, but you still do it with tact and grace. You develop a comfort level with your discomfort. Capable, inspirational leaders repeat the getting-comfortable-with-discomfort process with every item on their personal and professional development list.
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader. ~Seth Godin, author
A friend says he always knows when someone in his work department has messed up—everyone receives an email from the boss reminding them to start, stop or continue doing a particular thing. Their boss is notorious for not dealing with performance issues head-on. He indulges his comfort zone and short-changes developing his employees.
The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk. ~Alasdair A.K. White, management theorist
Being stuck in that “steady level of performance” has its benefits and disadvantages. On the plus side, there’s consistency and safety. On the minus side, there’s lack of growth, no improvement, and probably a few incorrect assumptions. Boredom, too.
Back in 1908, research from Harvard psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson demonstrated a “Goldilocks too much, too little, just right” correlation between performance and mental or physiological arousal. Effective leadership requires finding an ever-flexing optimal level of anxiety. Too much leads to danger or chaos. Too little yields being safely stuck in complacency and the status quo.
A just-right amount of short-term stress helps us learn, grow, and make better choices. “Working right around the edge really helps you learn and progress,” notes Erik Dane, a professor at Rice University. If your goal is to lead others, you have to first lead yourself, and doing that requires embracing a measure of discomfort. Comfort and conformity are augmented with discomfort and differences.
The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountains in our view we love to walk the plains. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer and statesman
5 uncomfortable questions to ask yourself
If you think you’ve became too comfortable in your current leadership practices, reflect on your answers to these five questions. Better yet, share them with a colleague and listen with your head and heart to what he or she has to say.
• Do I accept what is offered or do I ask for more?
• Do I accept conformity because it’s the easy way out or do I push boundaries and challenge assumptions to make the playing field level for all?
• Do I use the words “or, but, and no” frequently or do I use “and, let’s give it a try, and yes” regularly?
• Do I focus only on my strengths or do I invite others to help me see my blind spots so I can be better?
• Do I believe my positions and answers are always the right ones or do I welcome diversity of thought, opinion, and perspective?
Risk exists in identifying comfort zone weaknesses, habits, biases, and instincts. However, rewards come, too.
How have you learned to find the leadership magic that sits outside your comfort zone?
Image source: Pixabay
