Grateful for gratitude

We play a part in the progress of people around us.

Our evaluations, suggestions, and tweaks of their behavior may or may not be helpful.

One thing is certain. Positive comments, gratitude, and encouragements have power to fuel another’s fire. (I’m speaking in generalities and not absolutes.)

My own story

I’m grateful for the gratitude and encouragement I receive from the Leadership Freak community. It’s energizing. It’s encouraging. It’s motivating.

I know intrinsic motivation is at the core of our behaviors. However, the positive tweets, emails, and comments both on my blog and on the phone bolster my courage to continue with the experiment I call Leadership Freak.

I have been thinking of the power of positive comments. They add fuel to a fire that already exists. They make the path more exciting. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not thinking about quitting with Leadership Freak. However, I have been thinking about how different I’d be right now without all the positive reinforcement. How much more difficult writing the Leadership Freak blog would be.

This post is not a lame attempt to elicit gratitude from the Leadership Freak community. It is an attempt at reminding all of us, me included, that we have the power to help others along their path.

Positive reinforcements fuel the fire of others. I’m encouraging you not to be stingy with gratitude, encouragement, and positive feedback. Leverage your power for good. It’s incredibly easy.

Perhaps the greatest untapped resource in the world is the untapped  influence of unspoken words that could have fueled others.

I’m grateful for gratitude.

Leadership Freak,

Dan Rockwell

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Making…..Performance…..Appraisals…..a Positive Experience

Leadershfreak welcomes guest blogger Sean Conrad. Thanks Sean.

For a lot of people, performance appraisals are a negative experience, because we are being judged by another. But you could change the whole experience and improve its business value simply by changing the focus. The goal should be to encourage and inspire people to be their best, rather than to critique, rate and rank them.

Here are some ways you can do that:

Encourage Self-Awareness

In order to change, we need to know ourselves and our deep motivations. By making performance journaling and self-assessments a part of your performance appraisal process, you encourage employees to deepen their self-knowledge, and support growth and change.

Foster Personal Development

Development plans should focus on enhancing an employee’s experience and expertise – preparing them for career advancement, not just addressing “performance gaps”.

Keep Records of Successes

Invite employees to reflect on why they excelled in a particular area. What were the “conditions” that supported their success? Consciously understanding what we need to be our best helps us to “recreate” those conditions, supporting our success.

Take the Focus Off the Ratings

If we want performance appraisals to be a positive experience, we need to focus on self-awareness and growth, not the ratings. Invite the employee to identify:

• What successes they had
• What contributed to their success
• Skills/areas they would like to further develop
• Things they need to support their performance and success

The manager’s role should be to coach and support, not judge. To encourage this, you can do away with numerical ratings altogether, or move to a simplified 2 or 3 point scale.

Employee performance appraisals don’t have to be a dreaded task. With the right positive focus and approach, they can be a powerful tool for nurturing self-awareness, development and high performance.

What do you think? Do you have any other suggestions for making performance appraisals a positive experience? What things help you to improve your performance?

Sean Conrad is a Senior Product Specialist at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of talent management solutions. For more of his insights on talent management, read his posts on the Halogen blog, and to learn more about best practices visit Halogen’s Talent Management Centers of Excellence.

“T” is for Timid

(This is the “T” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.”)

You don’t have to be charismatic to be a great leader. Needing the spotlight hinders rather than helps leadership success. However…

Leaders can’t be timid.

Timid = fearful, lacking conviction or boldness or courage.

Timid and shy are two different things. Jim Collins indicates that great leaders don’t need the spot-light. They are not larger-than-life. They are quiet, shy, self-effacing, and reserved. However, they aren’t driven by fear. They aren’t timid. They are driven by conviction. They have courage.

Quiet and weak are two different things. One of my fatal leadership blunders was underestimating quiet people. Quiet people are frequently strong, tenacious, dedicated individuals who know how to stay on target and get the job done.

One expression of timidity is excuses. Timid people are stay-the-samers. They have millions of imagined reasons why things should stay the same. On the other hand, under the surface of some quiet people sits a tenacious tiger driven by courage and conviction. Wake the Tiger at your own peril!

Successful leaders aren’t timid they are tenacious. They face hard truths and have tough conversations. They quietly press through resistance. They quietly grind “enemies” into dust.

Two ways to overcoming timidity

Timid people can become tigers if they embrace a compelling vision for themselves or their organization. Vision signals a shift from fear-driven to making-a-difference-driven living. Vision overcomes excuses.

Overcome timidity by loving something deeply. Many of the timid folks I know are married. How did they face relational fears? Love overcame their fear. Love your organization. Love your people enough to have the tough conversation. Love is simply a commitment to another’s highest good.

Today is a good day to face timidity.

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Have you seen a quiet person become a tiger?

How can leaders overcome timidity?

What other “T’s” for leaders can you offer?

Slay the Sandwich

(This is the “S” installment of the series “Alphabet for Leaders.”)

It’s nearly instinctive to buffer bad news with good. Additionally, it’s standard practice to balance negative feedback with positive. It’s called the feedback sandwich. It sounds effective on paper. It seems right but it isn’t. I suggest it’s time to slay the feedback sandwich.

An ineffective approach

When you begin a feedback session with a compliment, what do recipients think? They think, “Oh boy, what have I done now?” Am I right? When it happens to you, aren’t you sitting there waiting for the other shoe to drop?

You sit there anticipating the bad news before it arrives. Inevitably, the shoe drops and the negative feedback hits. You’re thinking, “I knew it.” After the negative feedback, you see the positive comment coming from a mile away. However, by that time, your mind is focused on the corrective comments you just heard.

What’s the problem?

The net effect of the feedback sandwich is it discounts positive feedback.

What’s the alternative to the feedback sandwich?

Stop destroying the power of encouraging statements by using them to buffer or balance bitter pills. Kill the sandwich. If you have negative feedback, simply give it.

An essential condition.

In order to kill the sandwich, create a work environment soaked in encouragement. Ken Blanchard’s experience indicates it takes four positive statements to balance one negative. “Over doing” positive feedback establishes a natural platform for negative feedback.

Who should apply the 4 to 1 rule?

Positive environments don’t magically appear. They are intentionally nurtured by skillful leaders who use their influence to create places where people love to work. With this in mind, everyone needs to intentionally “over do” positive feedback; parents, spouses, leaders, managers, and employees. When was the last time you said a good word?

If you liked this post, I think you’ll enjoy “Positive Talk.”

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I’ve taken an hard line on a soft topic. Please feel free to offer an alternative approach.

What positive feedback strategies or examples can you suggest?

What other “S” leadership words can you offer the LF community?

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Untapped potential in view of resistance and reluctance

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(This is the “R” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.)

Long-term success is a result of leveraging your strengths. Marilyn Savant correctly observes, “Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.”

However, there comes a point when weaknesses establish what John Maxwell refers to as the leadership lid. Weaknesses restrict and eventually cap potential. Bumping against the leadership lid means you are maximizing your current strengths.

In positive terms, points of restriction may highlight points of untapped potential.

For example, if you resist dealing with conflict, dealing with conflict is both the lid and also the point of untapped potential for your leadership. If you reject personal interactions while clinging to the safety of your office, personal interactions reflect untapped opportunity.

Ray Lee Hunt suggests, “It’s more important to know your weaknesses than your strengths.” Untapped potential is unleashed by overcoming personal reluctance to acknowledge weaknesses and resistance to developing new strengths.

I’m bumping against the leadership lid right now. The organization I lead needs an organizer. I’m not it. Additionally, reaching the next level requires more than delegating organizational duties. I don’t have to do it all. However, it’s obvious that my weaknesses in this arena create a lid that caps our potential.

I’m learning to face my reluctance to focus on organization, processes, and procedures. Admittedly, I’ll never turn this weakness into my greatest strength. The thought of spending a day creating organizational charts and establishing policies and procedures makes my head hurt. However, continued success demands that I overcome my reluctance to deal with this weakness.

You can succeed to a point by following the path of least resistance. However, untapped potential requires facing personal points of reluctance. “You cannot run away from a weakness; you must some time fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?” Robert Lewis Stevenson

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How can individuals prevent personal weaknesses from capping their potential?

What other “R’s” for leaders can you suggest?

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In praise of Questions

(This is the “Q” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.”)

Momma said it isn’t polite to answer a question with a question. Don’t tell momma, but I think, at least on that one, she was wrong.

I bet you’ve done this. Someone asks a question and immediately you give a brilliant answer. After dispensing your pearls of wisdom, the questioner explains that you didn’t understand the question. Duh!

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Not all questions are good.

Employees who don’t want to follow directions use questions as tools to get out of performing assigned tasks. They keep asking for clarification until reverse delegation occurs.

Some questions are tools of distraction. Devious people squirm out of the spotlight by using questions to put the spotlight back on you or others. Their questions aren’t explorations they are protection devices.

Questions are the most powerful statements you can make.

Questions open windows of enlightenment. “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question,” Decouvertes.

Questions overcome resistance. Make a statement and others naturally question it. People are pushed away. On the other hand, ask an honest question and people lean in.

Questions enable others to own their own conclusions. When I tell you the answer, I own the answer. If you arrive at the answer yourself, you own the answer.

Stupid Questions?

You may falsely believe that giving answers makes you seem wise. The opposite is true. Peter Drucker said, “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.”

Tell me who you are.

I make conclusions about others based on the questions they ask. If they don’t ask questions, I conclude they are self-absorbed and uninteresting. (I’m just being honest) Voltaire put it this way, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

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How do we ask questions poorly?

How can we craft good questions?

What other leadership “Q’s” can you offer?

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If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy: “The Ten Best Questions Ever.”

The “P” word for leaders – Priorities

(This is the “P” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.”)

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.” Freya Madeline Stark

Ever wish you had more time? Who hasn’t? However, if you don’t have priorities, creating more time won’t help. You’ll end up just as over-booked, over-worked, and over-whelmed as you are now.

Truth is I feel good when I’m busy. Actually, I feel more than good. I feel secure, useful, and important. Are we sending a subtle message when we say we are busy? Do we need busy-ness to prove our worth?

“It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy – very busy – without being very effective,” Stephen Covey.

If life is about doing things then priorities point to things that must be done. Perhaps more importantly, priorities point out “good” activities to leave undone.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least,” Goethe.

A person with priorities does what matters.
A person without priorities does what is urgent.

Time management begins with priorities that protect you from the tyranny of the urgent. One enemy of a priority driven life is email. My reading indicates leaders spend at least 40% of their time working out of their inbox. “If you are working off your inbox you’re working off the priorities of others,” Donald Rumsfeld.

Furthermore, Priorities express values, mission, and vision. Most importantly, the “big three” always explain your impact on stakeholders, employees, and customers. In a word, priorities are about people.

If you’re like me you need to make establishing priorities a priority.

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Click here for 10 time management tips.

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How do priorities impact your daily life?

What are the steps to establishing priorities?

What other “P” words can you offer leaders?

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Note: The life circumstances of some LF readers may require them to live exhausting lives simply to stay afloat. In this case, your priority is survival. You have my respect.

Developing other leaders

Thinking back on my past I can identify people who developed my potential and skill. It’s a pleasure to think back on their positive influence in my life.

First of all, leadership development is never an accident. It’s always intentional. Additionally, from a business viewpoint, leadership development always aligns with organizational values, mission, and vision. Now, I’ll share part of my story.

There are people in my past who believed in me. They saw things in me that I didn’t see in myself. Of all the things that changed me, this is the most powerful. If you want to develop a leader, believe in their potential. Look beyond what is to what could be. With that in mind, focus on strengths not weaknesses.

There are people in my past who gave me opportunity. They had courage to let me try things I hadn’t tried before. Here is a rule of thumb. When someone is 70% to 80% ready, stretch them with new opportunities that develop their skills and potential.

There are people in my past that instructed and corrected me. They exercised positive impact even during negative correction because I was completely convinced they had my best interest in mind.

Here is a final word of encouragement. Feeling unworthy or unqualified may hinder you from developing others. Or perhaps, you fear not having all the answers. Answer this fear by simply sharing what you know. Think of it as pouring from your cup into theirs.

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What can individuals do to help other leaders develop?

The down side of Options

Frequently leaders create options. Problem solving is about options. Brainstorming sessions generate options. We love life when it presents options. On the other hand, we feel trapped when we don’t have options.

Never the less, too many options paralyze. For example, every salesperson knows customers can’t choose if too many options are present. Customers choose best in an either/or situation.

Options also drain enthusiasm and commitment. You’re never 100% committed to plan A when plan B sits in the wings. Perhaps engagement and marriage best illustrate this idea. When couples get engaged they eliminate options. They chose one. There’s no enthusiasm and commitment if they keep plan B open. It’s unfulfilling to enter marriage filled with thoughts about others you might have married.

Making a decision eliminates options. That’s one reason decision making can be difficult. However, you can’t move forward while focusing on an option that might have been.

Frequently, organizational and personal success depend on your ability to eliminate all the options you’ve created except one. In this case, keeping all your options opened paralyzes progress and reinforces the status quo.

Triumphant forward movement requires turning your back on all options except one and pursuing that option with gusto.

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What other “O’s” can you offer leaders?

When should we keep our options opened?

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You’ve just read the “O” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.”

“N” is for Negativity

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(This is the “N” installment of the series, “Alphabet for Leaders.”)

Most of the people I know make negative statements based on imagined negative speculations.  That includes me. When we don’t know the facts we make them up. We assume we know another’s motives, secret thoughts and negative intentions even when we don’t.

On the other hand, I know a few positive people with cheery dispositions. They walk around with half-full cups. But I don’t trust them.  It seems to me, they are deluding themselves or they are deluding others. Either way, they can’t be trusted. Of course I’m being sarcastic. However, there is a hint of truth in my sarcasm. I do have a natural skepticism toward people who are always up beat.

A negative friend says, “Things are going really great. I’m just waiting for something bad to happen.”

The positive side of negativity is you’ll eventually be right. Bad things happen. Problems arise. Crisis is inevitable.

I’m a pessimist dealing with negativity.

#1. If you feel negative, please don’t pretend you don’t feel it. You can’t fix what you don’t own.

#2. Get over saying, “I’m not a pessimist, I’m just a realist.”

#3. Not all negativity is bad. Anticipating problems, resistance, choke points, and other difficulties helps leaders devise strategies and solutions.

#4. Confidence reinforces positive attitudes. Feeling like you’re capable or at least able to become capable lowers stress and enhances an affirmative approach. Confidence eliminates, “I can’t.” Positive people say, “I don’t know but I’m sure we can figure it out.”

#5. Get the facts rather than feeding negativity with imagined speculations.

I’m a recovering pessimist. I still squint at the brightness of positivity. It doesn’t come naturally. However, I’m finding that positivity takes me where I want to go while negativity strengthens the status quo.

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How can negative people develop positive attitudes?

What other words that begin with “N” can you add to the “Alphabet for Leaders?”