How to Make Subordinates Colleagues

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You must give power in order to empower? 

Empowerment is giving qualified people  power and permission to act. Empowerment fails when leaders talk empowerment but hang on to permission or make it difficult to act.

Empowered people become colleagues not employees.

Transform your organization by making subordinates colleagues.

1. Eliminate exclusive trappings of power. Reserve parking spaces based on achievement not position, for example.
2. Destroy barriers by welcoming and respecting input from anyone. Never act dismissively.
3. Mix with the “riff raff,” during meals and social activities. (Sarcasm intended)
4. Honor people who actually do things rather than talk about doing things.
5. Step back so others can step in.

Getting real:

In an “organization of colleagues” responsibility, accountability, and evaluation goes both ways.

The five suggestions I listed above are helpful but reflect safe top down structures. They aren’t enough. If you’re serious about empowering people, empower subordinates to give performance reviews to their bosses. If you are really serious, publish the results on your organizations intranet.

Colleagues hold each other responsible.

Resistance:

We can’t have subordinates evaluating bosses because:

1. Subordinates aren’t qualified to give performance reviews. They don’t understand the Halo Effect, for example.
2. Employees will use performance reviews to get back at superiors.
3. Underlings won’t tell the truth, they’ll inflate reviews in order to appease bosses.

The reasons you resist bottom-up evaluations is your justification for hanging on to power and explains why people don’t feel empowered.

Good and bad news:

“Organizations of colleagues” are on the way in. Younger generations honor ideas from all quarters and disregard established structures. Thank the Internet and Social Media. Opportunities for empowered organizations are greater than ever.

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What attitudes and behaviors become important if subordinates give performance review to bosses?

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Restarting Stalled Projects, Guaranteed

Every reason projects stall comes back to one, lack of urgency.

Foggy deliverables, inadequate resources, blurred priorities, under qualified participants, and distant deadlines inevitably drain urgency.

Who’s responsible:

Save time, energy, and resources by settling the question of responsibility for derailed projects, quickly. Leaders are responsible, always.

Now that we know who’s responsible, always ask “what questions,” first. Save “why questions” for later, if at all.

“Why” matters, but, don’t meet to discuss why the project stalled. Why questions invite excuses, assign blame, and delay progress. We already know why. Someone didn’t deliver.

Determine why by asking what.

Three questions:

Restart stalled projects by asking three questions to each team member, privately, never in public meetings.

1. What have you completed?
2. What can you do next?
3. When can you have the next step done?

Explore don’t blame. Momentum grows by looking forward, not back.

Regarding question two:

Restarting requires next steps to be simple, quickly achievable, and clearly observable.

Regarding question three:

Question three establishes a deadline.

You may prefer assigning rather than asking for deadlines. It depends on how well you know team members and how familiar you are with the project. In either case, set one.

Short timelines energize urgency. Ask what can be done by Friday?

The next meeting:

Schedule your next meeting the day of the deadline you established when you asked question three. At that meeting ask the three questions again.

In between:

Between the personal conversations where you asked the three questions and the next meeting, contact each team member to ask where they are and determine what they need. Remind them of Friday’s meeting.

Managing projects goes far beyond asking three questions. Use this strategy for two to four weeks to restart stalled projects, assuming they should be revitalized. Urgency enables you to deal with deeper issues and adapt as  you go.

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What steps or strategies have you used to restart stalled projects?

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How to Protect and Enhance Your Strengths

Your strengths have dark sides that limit potential, destroy achievement, and hamstring opportunities.

Powerful strengths become anchors without softeners. The difference between mediocre and extraordinary success is tempering qualities.

Task oriented leaders come off as people-users more interested in finishing projects than the people completing them. Temper your strength with:

1. Palpable expressions of kind heartedness. Your rush to completion makes you seem unkind.
2. Making others feel liked and appreciated.
3. Environments where honoring achievement is frequently given and received.

Quick minded decisive leaders seem harsh and become untrustworthy without powerful moorings. Temper your strength with:

1. Strong unquestioned alignment with organizational values that guide decisions.
2. Obvious orientations to selflessly choose the best for others and their organization.
3. Unquestioned commitment to noble ethical standards, to always do the right thing.

Mentoring leaders seem like complaining meddlers. Temper your strength by:

1. Infusing hope – expectations for success – into others.
2. Giving time and space to develop. Patiently step back.
3. Maintain cheerfulness in the face of behavioral problems to solve and leadership qualities to develop.

All leaders:

Successful leaders develop all the qualities, behaviors, and attitudes I listed. However, if your needle tips toward one of the leadership styles I mentioned the corresponding tempering qualities are essentials not options.

Apart from tempering qualities, you’ll crash on the rocks with peers, employees, and organizations. Enhance don’t undermine your highest potential.

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Have you seen leadership strength become hindrances?

What tempering qualities can you add?

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The Destruction of Potential and Joy

Image source

Leave the good ole days in the past. Enjoy memories but never try recreating experiences.

Some years back, my wife and I went to an amusement park with another couple. It was the perfect storm of fun. The day was perfect. The crowds were small. We smiled, laughed, and played till it hurt. I feel nostalgic thinking about it. I love remembering, but trying to recapture that experience insults the present.

Warm fuzzy “I remember when conversations” are filled with misconceptions that drag you backwards into futile frustrating pursuits that always disappoint.

Build your future don’t recreate your past. Treat history like a platform not a magnet.

History is useful in that it helps you:

1. Understand noble values. Your history is filled with noble thinking and behaving. Think back to behaviors that made you proud. Embrace the intent while employing present methods and leveraging present opportunities. Wishfully looking back always frustrates and never brings out your best.
2. Identify enduring priorities. Think back to your greatest successes. Repeat enduring principles that matter.
3. Relish points of joy. Let joys from the past propel you toward new joys. Dreams of recreating old joy destroys potential for new joy.

History can’t:

Although history unveils noble values, enduring priorities, and points of joy, it doesn’t uncover relevant methods. History hinders progress when we cling to methods that once worked. Furthermore, history’s magnetism is magnified through repetition. Before long you’re saying, “We’ve always done it that way.”

Recreating history blinds and eventually destroys your leadership.

Radical vision:

Vision may build on the past but radical vision always breaks with it. Think major movements like the Protestant Reformation or the Civil Rights Movement.

Successful leaders always create the future.

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How can leaders leverage the past without being trapped in it?

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Successful Intervention in 5 Steps

Weak leaders smugly think, “I knew that would happen.” Cowardly leaders saying “I told you so.”

Not if but how:

Strong leaders tip toward courageous intervention. They don’t sit on the sidelines like cowards gloating over failures they saw coming. They turn potential failures to successes.

On the other hand, interventionist leaders aren’t meddling parents who step in too soon too often. People resent quick interventionist and respect leaders who give them space. Successful interventionists:

1. Celebrate progress even if it’s minimal. Celebrate more! Your passion to make things better causes you to minimize progress. Minimizing progress demoralizes by undervaluing small successes, past efforts, and sincere dedication. Celebrating progress, on the other hand, honors and encourages.

   The best form of intervention is celebration.

2. Fix with not for, unless risks or costs are high. Deadlines may require fixing for.
3. Make fewer statements.
4. Ask open ended questions.
5. Provide outside resources and connections. You may not have the time or knowledge to intervene but you know someone who can. (my second favorite)

Think of yourself as coach and teacher rather than authoritative leader. You don’t play the game. You enhance the play of others.

Strategic delay:

Withhold short-term intervention for long-term benefits. In this case, the consequences of delay may be painful but temporary. Cheering from the sidelines while others struggle forward – and you could help – strengthens the team as long as:

1. Time allows.
2. The people involved have potential.
3. Incremental progress continues.
4. Costs and penalties are low.
5. Frustration is manageable.
6. Learning and development continues.
7. Learning applies to current projects, untapped opportunities or future vision.

Intervene when:

1. People max out.
2. Progress stalls.
3. Costs are high.
4. Frustration distracts.
5. Learning stops or becomes irrelevant.

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When and how do you intervene?

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This resource helps me successful intervene: “Coaching for Engagement” by Bob Hancox, Russell Hunter, Kristann Boudreau.

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Life Changing Leadership Quotes? – You Decide

Being smart enough to know you’re dumb makes learning easy. There’s a personal light bulb moment reflected in every quote that follows.

Forward trajectory quotes:

1. Any fool can start something new. It takes brilliant  leaders to stop something old.My life gives testament to the power of purposeful abandonment.  A little over 3 years ago, the organization I love died to me.  I crossed a line by saying, it’s better to lose it all than continue along the current path.

   Stopping things initiated a process that radically changed my life and the organization I still lead. Current attitudes, abilities, processes, or systems are responsible for our present situation.  Clinging to them won’t change anything. Timely stops are tangible steps to new starts.

2. Don’t demonize the past in order to move into the future.
3. Criticism is about what was. Leadership is about what could be.
4. Committing to a vision turns paralyzing stress into energizing passion.
5. Confusion is the door to learning and the window of vision.
6. Making a difference is not a one-time event.

Learning leader quotes:

1. Leadership is influence. Listening opens the door of influence.
2. Your most powerful tool of influence is your ears not your tongue.
3. Too often, we make up our mind and then prove it with the facts.

High performance quotes:

1. Aligning personal passion with organizational objectives creates performance sweet spots.
2. Ever notice that many of the biggest complainers seem to do the least?
3. Success is about striving not arriving.
4. Performance reviews that focus on improving weaknesses are a colossal waste of time.

Authentic leader quotes:

1. Your leadership potential is rooted in your authentic self.
2. People who’ve found their soul can own their superficiality.
3. People demanding respect don’t feel respected.

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Which quote do you find most applicable to your leadership moment?

How would you modify, amplify, or illustrate these quotes?

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Long Noses Build Big Barriers

Brain power, skills, and success beckon leaders to believe they are better than others when they aren’t. The most repulsive lie leaders believe about themselves is the long-nose-lie, “I’m better than.”

Everyone sees the long nose you look down. The insecure feel inferior around your long nose while climbers grovel for its approval. In either case, people can’t take their eyes off it’s disgusting length.

Long nose leaders:

1. Enjoy flattery.
2. Prefer control to empowerment
3. Treat employees like things.
4. Never eat in the cafeteria.
5. Don’t know employee names.
6. View people as disruptions.
7. Believe fear and distance motivates.

How noses grow:

Confusion between performance and being human grows long noses. One success following another landed you in leadership. Sadly, success shrunk your brain and grew your nose. Your tiny head became filled with small thinking exaggerating your huge proboscis. You forgot that everyone in the world is essentially the same. We all want to:

1. Feel respect.
2. Love and be loved.
3. Engage in meaningful work.
4. Control our environments.
5. Feel secure.

You may have performed better than others in your context but behind your shrinking head and growing nose, you developed amnesia. Your long nose indicates you forgot your own humanity. Your long nose reflects a barrier that obscures universal human need and feeds emptiness.

Led by long noses:

Once a nose gets long it’s hard to shrink it. But, big heads make long noses look small. Grow your brain by changing your thinking. The simple solution to the long-nose-lie is giving people exactly what you want them to give you. For example, give the respect you demand for yourself to others. Surprisingly, your long nose may point the way.

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How do leaders overtly or subtly let others know they believe they are better than others?

What needs do long noses have that reflect universal human need?

Have you seen someone escape the long-nose-lie, once they believed it?

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The Most Dangerous Lie Leaders Believe

The most dangerous lie leaders tell themselves is, “I know.”

DeBono wisely said, “Those who think they know, don’t.” All leaders fall prey to this lie, yes all. How many times have you thought you knew but discovered you didn’t?

You think what you think because it’s right. Right?

You came to know too much because:

1. You confused smarts with knowledge. Being smart concerns brain power; knowledge is about information. Is information growing exponentially? Then you don’t know.
2. You forgot knowledge evolves because circumstances, research, and people change.
3. You’ve been right before which makes you think your solutions were the only or best solutions. Truth is, they just worked.

Thinking you know when you don’t is dangerous because knowing:

1. Closes minds.
2. Creates defensive postures.
3. Casts dissenters in negative lights.
4. Ends curiosity.

Solving the knowing problem:

1. Keep curiosity alive by slowing down. Fast answers end questions and exploration. Give your team more time to explore. Once again a quick brain becomes a problem. Maybe you should pretend you are dumb?
2. Seek input from diverse sources. Diversity explodes knowing. Bring your ideas up to accounting, custodial, or support staff. Talk to the guy on the street. They’ll show you you don’t know. “The best ideas emerge when very different perspectives meet.” Frans Johansson (Tweeted by @CFALeadercast)
3. Entertain the notion there’s more to know. Worse yet, let the uncomfortable words, “I don’t know,” bounce around in your head.

A tension:

Robert Sutton suggests you need enough doubt to keep an open mind and enough confidence to move forward. I bet you aren’t good at doubting.

Doubting your knowing is the beginning of knowing.

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Do you think the belief that we know when we don’t is the most dangerous leadership lie leaders believe? If not, which lie would you suggest?

What are the symptoms and cures of thinking we know when we don’t?

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I’m working on a book titled, “The Lies Leaders Believe.” Check out the growing list of lies leaders believe: “The Top Ten Lies Leaders Tell Themselves“

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Exalting Leaders

Encourage and exalt leaders don’t pull them down. But you may say, “Won’t arrogance destroy them.”

Destruction:

Leaders hungry for power are dangerous.

Arrogant leaders stop listening, grow autocratic, and become self-protective narcissists. Like boxers in the ring, protect yourself at all times. Never trust them. They’ll slice you down and sacrifice stakeholder value for personal gain. They use and abuse.

Construction:

Dedication to serving answers arrogance. Servant-leaders give, first and foremost.

All the great leaders were servants. Leadership is service. Leadership opportunities are service opportunities.

The higher we lift servant-leaders the more we expand and extend their service. The greater they become the more they serve.

The more we build servant-leaders up the more they build others.

Safe hunger to lead:

Reluctant leaders frequently misunderstand leadership. Unsavory, unethical, power hungry leaders disgust them. They want nothing to do with it. But, the principles and attitudes of servant-leadership ignite desires for leadership in true potential leaders.

The noble desire to lead stands above desires for power, authority, gain, and glory. The more you lead the more you serve. The more you serve the more you enjoy it. In this way, desires for leadership motivate and sustain you through tough times.

Unselfish selfishness:

Serving includes sacrifice of the best kind. Honor your best self by joyfully, unashamedly giving yourself to others. You serve others best when you understand, appreciate, nurture, and give your gift.

Go ahead:

Encourage and exalt servant-leaders. Give them glory – they’ll give it back. In some organizations, pulling leaders down is a spectator sport. Pull servant-leaders down at your own peril. Pull them down you pull your own house down. Lift them you lift yourself.

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What encourages you?

How can we exalt leaders in ways that extend their service?

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A rant against arrogant leaders: “Avoiding the Putrid Beast Destroying Leaders“

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Avoiding the Putrid Beast Destroying Leaders

Pride is good. For example, “Have some pride” and “Take pride in your work.”

Arrogant pride, however, represents the dark, blinding, deceptive underbelly of leadership. Arrogant pride drives leaders to gather in protective huddles of pseudo-invincibility where stepping on others is smugly applauded and lifting others is foolish weakness.

Filthy dark festering pride drives outrageous salaries, underhanded dealings, and deceptive accounting practices. What about employee handbooks and HR guidelines intentionally vague or confusing so they can be used to accomplish any leader’s personal agenda?

The danger of healthy pride is its putrid ravenous brother lives one step across the border. His name is arrogance.

10 symptoms the ravenous beast has you:

1. Flattery – Hateful manipulative speech that creates vulnerability to deceptive self-serving influence.
2. Stubborn unwillingness to reconsider. After all, you might look weak!
3. Insults, put downs and slanderous speech.
4. Sacrificing relationships for power, position, and prestige.
5. Refusing to explore options and opinions while scorning those who disagree.
6. Lying.
7. Argumentativeness.
8. Name dropping.
9. Feelings of untouchable invincibility rooted in power, authority, and possessions.
10. Rejecting correction.

Bonus: Pretending to be something you aren’t.

The deepest danger:

When the beast has us, it blinds us. His strangling grip and destructive teeth gnawing on our soul feels delightfully right.

5 suggestions:

1. Service. You serve everyone from the temporary receptionist to the CEO, everyone. Leadership is service.
2. Accountability. Find one person who tells you the truth, regardless.
3. Love. Always seek the highest good of others.
4. Priority. Help others win first. Find your win second.
5. Gratitude. Thankfulness lifts others by acknowledging their contributions.

Double danger:

You can be proud of being humble. Anyone have a suggestion for that one?

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What symptoms of arrogance lurk in your environment?

How can leaders deal with the ravenous beast?

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