Mastering Leadership Relationships

People look to leaders when things aren’t working.

Not working:

In less than three years, nearly 300 of Campbell Soup Company’s 350 global leaders had either left on their own or were asked to leave. What kind of CEO leads a blood-bath like that?

You might picture a Genghis Khan character with blood dripping from his sword. But Doug Conant – quiet introvert – is the CEO who turned Campbell Soup Company around.

Working:

During one of our conversations, Doug told me, “Successful leaders are tough on issues and tender with people.” Every leader defaults to one.

“If you are out of balance, the solution is not to lower the volume where you are strong but to dial up in the area where you are less comfortable or feel less capable.” Doug Conant in “TouchPoints.”

Leaders who master the tension between tough and tender, master leadership relationships.

Both:

Doug explains that tough leaders:

1. Keep things simple.
2. Tackle issues head on.
3. Speak directly.
4. Move quickly.
5. Act decisively.

“… You may cross the line between not tolerating poor performance … and not tolerating mistakes…”

Tender leaders:

1. Place people first.
2. Set direction.
3. Provide few guidelines.
4. Leverage talent.
5. Get out of the way.

“… You may forget that it is more important to be trusted (which sometimes involves making tough calls) than to be liked.

Practice:

Doug’s TouchPoint leadership model is both tough and tender. Every interaction provides opportunity to move agendas forward through relational contact. Interruptions aren’t frustrations. Doug believes, “The action is the interaction.”

A favorite Conant quote:

“You don’t have to go all the way to bright – just make it better today.”

Opportunity:

Leadership Freak readers have the unique opportunity to spend time on the phone with Doug Conant. Learn more and register for this FREE opportunity. Space is limited.

How can leaders navigate tensions between tough and tender?

13 Power Tips for Leading Through Uncertainty

It’s certain that we live in uncertain times.

13 Power Tips for Leading through Uncertainty:

1. Pull with – not against, higher ups. Grab the rope and pull, even if you disagree. Everyone who pulls in their own direction dilutes potential success. If you can’t pull with, jump ship, now.
2. Aim to make a positive difference. Don’t simply survive. Survival doesn’t inspire.
3. Listen and agree with expressions of fear. People feel minimized when you minimize their feelings. Affirm don’t correct. Ask, “What makes you feel that way?”
4. Schedule a “hard truth” meeting to explore worst case scenarios, fears, doubts, and what if’s. The sole purpose is honest expression without solutions. Paint black pictures. Prevent anyone from minimizing or solving anything. Honor and respect pain and fear. You look like a fool when you ignore the obvious. End “hard truth” meetings with power tip #5.
5. Schedule “tough solutions” meetings.
6. Break challenges and problems into small pieces. Ask, “Can we fix this?” When you find something you can fix, ask, “What can we do?”
7. Develop imperfect solutions. The search for perfect solutions creates uncertainty.
8. Learn as you go.
9. Celebrate small wins. Enjoy how far you’ve come. Momentarily forget how far you must go.
10. Focus on things within your power. Uncertainty focuses on factors outside your control; decisions made by others, economic downturns, or regulatory fiascos, for example.
11. Focus on positive behaviors and less on speculations. Uncertainty always causes speculation. Repeatedly ask, “What can we do.” But remember to embrace power tip #1, first.
12. Speak hard truths optimistically. Express highest points of confidence. “I’m not sure how this turns out but I’m giving it my best.” Pretending everything’s ok doesn’t instill confidence in those who know it’s not.
13. Connect with others who faced similar uncertainties and challenges.

Bonus: Remain emotionally steady.

This topic was suggested on the Leadership Freak Facebook page.

Which power tips are most difficult and why?

What power tips can you add to the list?

The Secret to Frustration’s Guidance

Leaders who hurry always neglect people. If leadership is about people why rush like it’s about tasks?

But, when rushing is required, never rush alone. Mentor as you go. Enable future replacements.

Work yourself out of, not into, jobs. Exponential success requires taking things from your bucket and putting them in theirs.

But, prepare people before you let go.

Two extremes of preparation:

Letting go too fast:

I treat people like I like to be treated. I’m a learn-as-you-go type. My tendency is to give responsibilities without much preparation. Mistakes don’t bother me as long as we’re learning. Many people prefer more preparation than I need.

I frustrate those who need preparation. Learn-as-you-go leaders may need to stay closer, longer.

Hanging on too long:

On the other extreme, you may be a prepare-before-you-leap leader. You view others through your preference for preparation.

They chomp at the bit but you feel they aren’t ready. You frustrate others because preparation takes too long.

One guide, frustration:

Peak performance requires acceptable levels of frustration, anxiety, or stress. Skillful leaders manage rather than eliminate frustration in others.

Avoid letting go too fast or hanging on too long by monitoring frustration. But never fully eliminate frustration. In one case, frustration indicates you’re going too fast, in the other, too slow.

Accept frustration’s guidance. Avoid being frustrated with their frustration.

One principle, support:

Amy Lyman Cofounder of Great Place to Work® told me, “Employees in great places to work feel supported.” Support those who need more preparation by giving it. On the other hand, not helping, feels like support to others.

Fuel beneficial levels of frustration and give support at the same time.

They determine what support feels like, not you.

How can leaders determine when others are ready to take on new responsibilities?

The Real Secrets to Creating Ownership

Image source by George Hodan

No one cares like you when you own it. But, the more you own the less they own.

No one wants to own what you own too.

Individuals take ownership, you can’t give it. When someone gives you something you don’t want, you protest. “No thanks.” If it’s forced on you, you take possession but not ownership.

Possession is assigned; ownership is taken.

Ownership factors:

1. Owners desire what they own. I worked and saved for the first bike I bought as a kid. I wanted that bike. Ownership is about desire not assignment.
2. Control expresses ownership; those who own, control. If you control everything, they own nothing, regardless of roles or assignments.
3. Owners sit at the table. If direct reports never attend meetings, you still own what they only possess.
4. Owners speak for themselves. Bosses who report for you are the real owners. Bosses who won’t let you speak usually take credit in the end because they owned it all the time.
5. Reward reflects ownership. The people receiving recognition and reward are real owners. Who gets the pat on the back?

Inspiring ownership:

Ownership is about them, first. Individual desire motivates ownership. You own what you want.

1. What personal or career goals pull them forward?
2. What aptitudes and passions drive them?
3. Where do they best align organizational mission and vision? Alignment is found never forced.
4. What organizational future most fuels their fire?
5. What makes them proud?
6. Why are they still with the organization?

Focus more on people and less on projects to inspire ownership. Are you spending most of your time explaining projects and little time understanding people? You’re still the owner.

What blocks ownership?

How are you creating ownership?

Three Qualities Traditional Leaders Reject

Image source by Petr Kratochvil

Regurgitating and recycling what you already know bores others, antiquates leadership, and destroys organizations.

Get out of yourself before you shrivel and die.

Growth, innovation, and future-building centers on what you don’t know and haven’t done.

Three surprising qualities of growing leaders:

#1. Receptivity:

Traditional leaders are unwelcoming. Traditional leaders expect you to receive their ideas; they don’t receive yours. Power, prestige, and position thrive in unreceptive, threatening environments.

Tell-me-more leaders, go further than,
I-already-know leaders.

Stop looking down your nose at outsiders, front line employees, and new hires. Adapt to them; don’t force them to adapt to you.

Growth lies around and outside.

#2. Withholding judgment:

Traditional leaders make judgments; growing leaders withhold judgment.

Judgment crushes baby ideas.

Quick minded decision makers inadvertently destroy growth. Stow what you think you know in the attic. Judgment ends growth and begins stagnation.

Keep in mind, stability requires decision making. Withhold judgment, don’t end it completely.

#3. Curiosity:

Traditional leaders fear looking foolish. They need to know. Curiosity celebrates what isn’t known. Courageously look foolish.

Emptiness is opportunity.

The downside of curiosity:

1. People want to know what you know as well as what you don’t.
2. Questions feel pushy and threatening when filled with expectation.
3. Constant curiosity spirals inward and downward.
4. Creating options causes confusion.

Curiosity is a means not an end. Use curiosity to challenge stagnant ideas and disrupt antiquated systems.

Most importantly, curiosity unearths new goals and next steps. Curiosity builds the future. On the other hand, curiosity without progress is stagnating indulgence.

What traditional leadership qualities stunt growth and innovation?

What leadership qualities inspire growth, innovation, and future-building?

The Top 10 Performance Factors for Teams

Image source by Vojko Kalan

Memo to the new team, 2/23/13:

Raise your hand if you love wasting time on:

1. Meaningless drivel.
2. Frustrating stagnation.
3. Superficial relationships.
4. Worthless discussions.
5. Trivial decisions.
6. Mediocre results.
7. Mundane impact.

If wasting time excites you, create dysfunctional teams.

Members of dysfunctional teams:

1. Dread meetings.
2. Can’t wait for meetings to end.
3. Return to meaningful work after meetings.

Functional formation path:

New teams follow predictable formation paths; forming, storming, norming, and performing. Tragically, many teams never perform.

10 high performance factors for teams:

1. Buy-in based on acceptable agreement. Go all-in based on 70% or 80% agreement. Express disagreements but leave all reservations in the meeting. When two people agree 100% of the time, one of them isn’t necessary. Waiting for 100% agreement means you’ll always be waiting.
2. Individual responsibility. Everyone grabs the rope and pulls. Reject drifting and drifters.
3. Honesty. Say what you think clearly, kindly, and respectfully. Going along to get along equals mediocrity.
4. Accountability. Ignoring nonperformance guarantees no performance. Avoid dancing around people, it’s dysfunctional.
5. Clear, agreed upon patterns for narrowing options and making choices. How will you make decisions?
6. Trust. What happens when others are honest?
7. Preferred communication channels. Email or phone, for example
8. Pursue results. What are you accomplishing? All talking informs doing or its wasted time.
9. Create momentum by building on wins. Wins are platforms not easy chairs.
10. Ask awkward questions. Dance with elephants before they crush you. Don’t expect perfect answer, however.

High performance is never a gentle accident.

Successful teams:

1. Trust.
2. Argue.
3. Commit.
4. Follow through.
5. Celebrate.

Above list inspired by, “5 Dysfunctions of a Team.“

How much do you want to matter?  High performance teams make you matter more.

Added resources:

“The Three Pillars of High Performance Teams”

My leadership coach Bob Hancox sent me this “Team Decision Making Tool.” Informed consent is enough.

Pattrick Lencioni’s pyramid of “5 Dysfunctions of a Team.” (Image source, me)

What team performance factors can you add?

Memo to the New Team 2/22/13

Image source

To the New Team:

You may be wondering why you don’t have more direction. It’s intentional.

The advantage of new teams is no history.

The advantage of being told what to do is safety. Freedom, on the other hand, makes the storming process more turbulent but the result is ownership.

You have the big picture and I trust you.

Your first few meetings include searching for clarity of roles, function, and identity.

Searching for clarity feels confusing and awkward.
Search for clarity with optimism.

Be realistic about your challenges without becoming pessimists. Don’t bury your head in the sand. If you do, you’ll fail. But…

Trust your ability to find answers.

Norming is the third stage of team formation:

1. Esprit de corps emerges. Respect and connection describe relationships. Norming results from working through storming. Allow time for bonds to form.
2. Shared goals create focus and guide decisions. It takes time for personal agendas to fade and the big picture to come into focus.
3. Rules of relationship are established. Everyone agrees on how to treat fellow team members. Some team members need more prep time than others, for example. This will be acknowledged and respected.

Go to: “Memo to the New Team,” for info on the first two stages of team formation.

Five questions to ask yourselves:

1. How can I help others fit in?
2. How can I support others?
3. How can I show respect to the talent of others?
4. How can we move forward? Teams spiral into negativity apart from forward movement. Small comes before big.
5. How can we be bold without being foolish?

Bonus tip: Put the person with the most complicated schedule in charge of scheduling meetings.

What brings teams together and creates high performance environments?

Memo to the New Team

To the new team:

Thank you for accepting a seat at the table. I’m writing to you because you’re young and I’m counting on your new team to lift our organization to new heights.

Learning to work on a team is a powerful opportunity for you. Seize it with gusto. However…

There’s nothing natural about working on teams. Independence is normal and easy. “Leave me alone and let me work on my own.”

Working together takes work.

Dysfunctional teams – all teams are dysfunctional at first – frustrate, distract, and de-motivate.

Avoid self-destructive behaviors.

On the other hand, team work is your path to maximum, meaningful impact in career and life.

Prepare yourselves! All new teams go through four stages.

Stage one – forming: Let’s get to know each other.

1. Impression management.
2. Conflict avoidance.
3. Administrative focus. When do we meet? What responsibilities do members perform?
4. Directive leadership. Newly formed teams require more direction than mature.

Stage two storming: Let’s figure out how to work together.

1. Openness, tension, and, conflict.
2. What are we here to do?
3. What can I do?
4. What can you do?
5. What must we do?
6. When and how do we function as a team?
7. When do we work independently?
8. Directive leadership. Teach members the four stages of team development.

Know: Storming is normal and necessary. Don’t skip or short-circuit the process.

Warning: Some teams spiral into permanent ineffectiveness during storming.

1. Immature members continue impression management. The only time they speak up is in the hall, after the meeting, to complain or criticize.
2. Members never move from self-interest to team-interest.
3. Success requires clarity but finding clarity feels confusing.

Stage three and four next time.

Three team-forming tips:

1. Accept the process.
2. Express yourself kindly. Courage born in anger or fear is ugly.
3. Support others aggressively.

***

*Bruce Tuckman is the originator of forming, storming, norming, and performing.

“Three Pillars of High Performance Teams.“ 

Next post in this series: “Memo to the New Team 2/22/13.”

What team-forming tips can you suggest for new teams?

The Three Pillars of High Performance Teams

***

“The more decisions a leader makes, the further he or she is from leading a high-performance team. … Make too many command decisions, and you’ll doom yourself and your team to mediocrity,” Mark Miller in, “The Secret of Teams.”

Everyone serious about success is serious about teams. Great teams lift organizations. Lousy teams drain everyone.

Mark Miller explains three pillars of successful teams.

First, success begins with selection. Every member must possess, “Attitude and aptitude for the job.”

Always begin with attitude, not skills. I’ve made the mistake of becoming enamored with skills and abilities.

Bad attitudes ruin teams.

People with bad attitudes:

1. Expect perfection from the beginning. They respond to imperfection by complaining or quitting. They can’t grow and improve.
2. Hate it when others do well.
3. Complain about others while excusing themselves. They blame.
4. Explain why things can’t be done. They’re “can’t do” rather than “can do” people. Favorite words include, “We can’t do that because …”
5. Gossip. Rather than supporting, they tear down.

Additionally, attitude without aptitude results in frustration and failure. If they can’t perform, can they learn?

Second, success requires constant training. “Become a training machine,” Mark Miller.

Training topics include:

1. Teamwork. Teach people how to work together if you expect them to work together.
2. Decision making.
3. Problem solving.
4. Leadership.
5. Management.

Third, successful teams develop and enjoy esprit de corps. Mark says it’s the “secret sauce” of high performance teams; the essential ingredient. “This is the heart stuff.”

“Your team will never perform at the highest possible level if the members of the team don’t exhibit genuine care and concern for one another.” Mark Miller

Surprising benefit:

Great teams mean you’re not alone.

***

What are the essential ingredients for high performance teams?

What prevents teams from performing?

***

I found, The Secret of Teams, well written and insightful. It’s must reading.

 

I Don’t Butt Heads with the CEO of Zappos

Image source by Hana Muchova'

Many CEO’s are told what they want to hear, rather than what team members really think. That’s a foolish way to avoid butting heads with the boss.

I asked Jamie Naughton, Speaker of the House for Zappos, to talk about a time when she butted heads with her famous CEO, Tony Hsieh. Jamie indicated that issues don’t escalate to head butting.

“There’s no argument, ever. If I don’t like something, then I just say it.”

How to avoid butting heads with the boss:

1. Establish disagreement-rules. Ask your CEO how he best receives disagreement.
2. Fully align with organizational values.
3. Advocate for the organization not yourself.
4. Say what you believe not what’s expected.
5. Disagree early, clearly, politely, and specifically.
6. Constantly communicate. Express opinions when you have them. Flare ups occur when issues build up.
7. Once decisions are made, grab an oar and row, regardless of your position.

Bonus: Add positive options.

Butting heads and who decides:

“The best thing about Tony as a CEO, as a boss, … He will give direction. He will give advice. … He’s going to be part of the conversation but he’s not the decision-maker.” Jamie Naughton.

Corporate teams fear CEO’s because CEO’s make too many decisions. Jamie explained that her boss would never make a decision about phone systems or sponsorship opportunities, for example. “Why would he approve a sponsorship when we have a marketing team who’s trained?” Jamie Naughton.

“He’s – Tony Hsieh – not going to interfere with my department because I know it best. He’s going to offer suggestions and I take it or leave it.” Jamie Naughton.

What suggestions do you have for disagreeing with the boss?

***

Bonus material: Jamie Naughton in her own words. (6 min.)

***

Connect with Jamie:

Jamie Naughton works directly with Tony Hsieh as the Speaker of the House for Zappos.

LinkedIn

Twitter: @Jamstar

***