A To-Don’t NOT a To-Do

Even four year olds know that being helped isn’t always helpful. Over eager parents, who step in to “help,” often hear frustrated children say, “I’ll do it myself!”

Never help those who can help themselves.

You got up this morning thinking about things to-do. But, leaders think about things to-don’t. Helpfulness lifted you to leadership but the need to help hampers once you’re there.

The need to help may reflect an unhealthy need to be helpful.

Leaders who need to help are short-sighted unhelpful hindrances who need to feel important.

Step out; don’t step in.

Helping isn’t helpful when it weakens, creates dependencies, or takes responsibility from others.

Delay helping when:

1. Ownership is high. Stepping in undermines ownership.
2. Teams are motivated.
3. Delay shows respect. “I trust you.”
4. Acceptable progress is being achieved.
5. Long-term benefits outweigh short-term results.
6. You questions methods and processes, not outcomes.
7. Struggle strengthens.
8. Teams trust you. They know you have their best interests in mind.
9. Failure humbles.
10. Defeat creates learning moments.

Bonus: Stop helping if helping didn’t help last time.

The goal of helping is enabling, not more helping.

Real help takes people to places where they don’t need help. Sometimes, not helping is helpful.

Help when:

1. Teams need an extra hand because conditions changed.
2. Relationships break down. Help the process.
3. Confusion persists. The great role of leaders is creating clarity.
4. Help “with” not “for.”
5. Helping develops skills.

Frustration:

Monitor frustrations. Acceptable levels of frustration intensify focus and motivate change. Don’t help.

Too much frustration generates relational conflict and paralyzes progress. Step in.

Tip:

Stay near; don’t isolate. Not helping isn’t an excuse to stay distant.

Back to the four year old. They’ll ask for help after they’ve tried, failed, and become frustrated. They respect you when you help after they’ve struggled. But, help before they struggle and they despise and reject you.

When is help, unhelpful?

How do you determine when to step in?

Addressing the Rotten-Apple-People Problem

Rotten apples – negative, destructive, self-absorbed, unethical employees – pollute organizations.

Furthermore, foul leaders inevitably build stagnant, foul organizations. Worse yet, passive leaders – those who tolerate rotten apples – create rotten environments by default.

Leaders who tolerate rotten apples are rotten themselves.

Facebook contributors discuss: “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch, true or false?” (5/3/13)

Spotting:

You don’t need a study to determine if your culture sucks.

1. People use blind copies in email.
2. Gossips win.
3. Territorial managers stake out and protect turf.
4. Leaders live in ivory towers.
5. Competition is about winners and losers not performance.
6. Getting by is the goal.
7. Smiles and laughs are rare.

Your culture sucks if people don’t love working in it.

Solving:

Organizational culture is simply the way you do things – how people treat each other. Yesterday, a Leadership Freak contributor suggested social contracts. KaPow!

Social contracts say you’re serious
about the way you do things.

Social contract:

We will:

1. Address issues in the smallest context possible. Dirty laundry is kept in the laundry room.
2. Expect you to connect with colleagues and teammates.
3. Take responsibility to improve things we don’t like.
4. Pursue the best interests of all parties, always.
5. Call you out if you let others down.
6. Speak candidly with compassion.
7. Forgive offenses that are acknowledged and addressed.

We won’t:

1. Say one thing to your face and another behind your back.
2. Tolerate posturing and puffing behaviors.
3. Lie, ever.
4. Blow up.
5. Hold grudges.
6. Have secret agendas.
7. Complain without bringing solutions.

Consequences:

Violating our social contract is grounds for warnings, corrective action, and dismissal, if necessary. You might be sent to our, “Be Nice,” class for social delinquents.

Enforcement:

Everyone is authorized to point out violations of social contracts, regardless of position or tenure.

More: Connecting Through Social Contracts.

What would you include in an organizational social contract?

How to Get Where You Want to Grow

Growth is a function of engaging in new activities. “New” is the difficult thing. Everyone wants to grow but not everyone wants to step from the known into the unknown.

The edge and beyond:

Growth happens on the fringes of leadership where comfort and discomfort meet.

You can’t grow if you can’t be uncomfortable.

Growth moments occur with one foot on solid ground and one foot firmly in midair. Growth happens “where the sidewalk ends.” (Where the Sidewalk Ends, is a children’s book by Shel Silversein)

If you want to grow:

1. Hang with people out of your league.
2. Say yes and I’ll try.
3. Trust.
4. Evaluate after, not during, stretch experiences.

Today’s growth moment:

I’m learning how to deliver content on camera. I’ll be surrounded by people who know things I don’t know, asking me to try things I haven’t tried. My producer, for example, has a graduate degree from Harvard in Educational Technology.

I plan to trust their expertise, try what they suggest, and basically keep my mouth shut. We’ll evaluate later.

Concept or reality:

The concept of growth is easier than the reality. Be willing to:

1. Be incompetent.
2. Make mistakes.
3. Look foolish.

We never grow until we do something
we haven’t done before.

Bonus:

Growth happens in community not isolation. Books and thinking help, but people are always central to your growth.

What are you doing for your growth?

How can leaders help others grow?

Ten Ways to Gain Initiative by Giving Authority

Image source by Виталий Смолыгин

Ineffective leaders seize and hoard authority; successful leaders give it. Those who cling to authority loose it. Those who give authority gain authority.

Authority is permission to act without permission.

Control freaks never inspire initiative. The more they control the less initiative – acting without permission – others take. Inspire initiative by giving authority.

Benefit:

Giving authority enhances your authority.

Releasing others to act apart from your direct guidance motivates them to seek your guidance. Delegating decisions enhances commitment to you and your organization.

People who believe they matter act like they matter.

Giving authority:

1. Train and equip to handle authority effectively.
2. Begin slowly.
3. Establish structures and systems that guide and limit authority.
4. Give decisions to those impacted by decisions.
5. Create titles. Titles convey authority and they don’t cost anything.
6. Create revised, temporary chains of command based on organizational context and team member competence.
7. Publicly explain new authority.
8. Establish the authority of others by deferring to those with expertise.
9. Share benefits and consequences of mistakes. Teams who hire a poor fit need to deal with replacing or reassigning them, for example.
10. Never neglect your authority.

Example:

Give teams authority to hire co-workers.

Warning:

You lose authority when others believe you are neglecting authority or passing the buck. Giving authority isn’t an excuse to not do your job.

Giving authority – asking people to act without permission – is the leaders job.

Who to trust with authority:

1. Do they clearly understand, embrace, and exemplify values, mission, and vision?
2. Do they understand organizational context and consequences of decisions?
3. Have they demonstrated competence?
4. Do they embrace accountability for choices? How have they dealt with past failures? Blame or responsibility.

Gain authority by giving it.

How can leaders effectively give authority?

Death to Bobble Head Leaders

Bobble head leaders don’t say what they really think. They go with the flow to get ahead. Bobble heads don’t speak their mind they defend the company line.

Leaders become bobble heads to protect position and get promoted. It’s dishonest and disingenuous. Look around. How many bobbing heads sit at the table? Is anyone disruptive?

Bobble-head organizations:

1. Lose creative contributions.
2. Make lousy, status quo decisions and complain about status quo results.
3. Reflect fear based cultures.

The reason you don’t speak your mind:

1. Untrustworthy team mates who use your ideas against you.
2. Organizational culture that celebrates going along to get along – “Yes cultures.”
3. Fear of being ridiculed for being wrong.

Good girls and boys go along and get stars on their report cards. Bad girls and boys – disruptors, dissenters, and the unorthodox – go to detention.

Fault:

Top leadership is fully to blame for bobble-heading. Rather than punish bobble heads they’re rewarded. Organization grow weak and leaders bask in fake approval.

Dying organizations thrive on stability, agreement, and orderly meetings.

Constructive dissent:

Peter Drucker commented, “Dissent, even conflict, is necessary, indeed desirable. Without dissent and conflict there is no understanding. And without understanding, there are only wrong decisions. 

Dissent is more than good, it’s noble.

People who change the world disrupt and critique. The path to exceptional is paved with the bones of the mediocre.

Creating dissent:

1. Assign dissent in the next meeting. Put a devil suit on half the team and challenge them to challenge ideas.
2. Ask everyone to make a list of reasons the initiative on the table won’t work.
3. Establish three options and have everyone advocate for all three.

The path to oblivion is smooth. Great decisions are born in conflict. Create structures for constructive dissent.

How can organizations create constructive dissent?

How can leaders avoid being mired in dissent? 

It’s today!

Last chance to register for FREE – LIVE conference call with Dr. Henry Cloud. “Set boundaries – Extend Results – Be Ridiculously in Charge.” INFO

Success is Harder than Failure

This post began as an email. It’s my response to a person who shared their mixed feelings regarding unexpected success and opportunity.

***

I’ve been thinking about our conversation regarding the problem of success and opportunity.

Those who succeed in unexpected ways know that success is harder than failure. We are excited with opportunities but they also feel uncomfortable, like new shoes. We should feel more gratitude and less anxiety.

When views were in the hundreds, writing Leadership Freak was easier. Today, with views in the millions, writing Leadership Freak feels a bit like new shoes. Additionally, opportunities come my way that exceed my expectations.

Yesterday, the leader of a 2 billion dollar government agency shook my hand and said, “I’m a huge fan.” It felt great. I also felt like hiding under the table.

Trust:

Someone told me, when Leadership Freak started taking off, “Trust Yourself.” This morning, I share that with you. Trust yourself.

Know:

Don’t get lost in opportunites. Know yourself. Take time to reflect on who you are. Let who you are guide what you do.

Bring:

Bring yourself to challenges and opportunities. Don’t bring someone else. Just bring you. If you want stress, try being someone else.

Story:

The classic story of David and Goliath has important lessons for leaders who face challenges and opportunities. (I don’t care if you think the story is fiction or fact. The lessons relate.)

David, a young shepherd, saw the challenge, Goliath. Those around him tried to tell him how to face the challenge.

They said, “Put on armor; use this sword.” They wanted him to do it their way, even though they were unwilling to face the challenge themselves.

Ultimately David faced the challenge his way, with a sling and a stone. He brought himself.

Trust Yourself

Bring Yourself

Be Yourself 

I’m a man of faith so my personal lists begins, Trust God. Regardless of your faith, my suggests remain.

How can leaders face the challenges of unexpected success and opportunity?

Last chance to register:

Another way to face opportunities is develop yourself. Today’s best FREE leadership development opportunity is a LIVE conference call at 1:00 p.m. EST with the former CEO of Campbell Soup Co.

Don’t miss it!

Seven Proven Strategies for Dealing with Liars

Image source by George Hodan

Leaders lie because they don’t care enough to tell the truth. It’s too much trouble convincing know-it-alls, for example, so they smile and let them believe they’re right. They say, “That sounds fine.” But they’re shading the truth.

Leaders lie to:

1. Build image.
2. Save face.
3. Prevent turmoil.
4. Solve conflict.
5. Distract or misdirect.
6. Manipulate others.
7. Protect information.
8. Put others down.
9. Elevate stocks.
10. Deceive themselves.

Bonus: Lying leaders pretend they know when they don’t. (One of the dumbest lies.)

Leaders believe lying is wrong but do it anyway.

Lying is always about some form of advantage.

Liars place their interests ahead of yours.

Bosses promise raises but don’t intend to deliver. Employees say they’ve done it when they haven’t. (See: The first lie I told at work.)

Seven strategies for dealing with liars:

1. Act quickly. Time is the liar’s friend.
2. Develop skepticism. Always begin with empathy, but, tender hearts are vulnerable to lies.
3. Be interested. Expose liars by asking questions like: How do you know? Who did you speak with? When did that happen? Who was there? What happened next?
4. Include others. Don’t talk to liars alone, have witnesses.
5. Validate by communicating with email.
6. Protect yourself. Don’t lie but don’t tell everything, either. Vulnerability is stupid when dealing with liars.
7. Confront liars you love. I know, we’re supposed to love everyone. Don’t lie to yourself, you don’t.

Bonus: Cultivate transparency – speak publicly – avoid unnecessary secrets. Tell all involved, who does what by when, for example.

Related posts:

12 True Behaviors that Expose Liars

Lying at work

Top Ten Lies Leaders Tell Themselves

See the growing list of responses on Facebook to the fill-in: Leaders lie because ______.

How can leaders deal with liars?

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?

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

***

Finding Real Leadership Power

Humility is real power, arrogance façade.

15 Ways to be an arrogant leader:

1. Rush. “Important” people don’t have enough time.
2. Look serious. The more important you are the more serious you look.
3. Detach. “Arrogance comes from detachment.” Henry Mintzberg.
4. Take calls or text during meetings. Now we know you’re important. Ooooo!
5. Know. Act like you know when you don’t. Arrogance makes learning difficult.
6. Delegate dirty work.
7. Isolate. Be too good for the “little” people.
8. Insulate. Create protective environments.
9. Interrupt.
10. Blow up. Anger and arrogance are relatives.
11. Gossip.
12. Tell don’t ask.
13. Speak don’t listen.
14. Complain and blame rather than solve and support.
15. Surround yourself with groveling yes-men.

Power:

Humility requires more confidence than arrogance. Fear makes us pretend we know, when we don’t, for example.

Humility is found, expressed, and nurtured in connecting. Arrogance pushes off; humility invites in. Withdrawal suggests independence; connecting expresses interdependence.

Humility builds trust. Trust fuels leadership. But you can’t trust arrogant people. They reject what’s right for what makes them look good, when necessary.

How to be a powerful humble leader:

1. Stand your ground where values are concerned. Humble leaders submit to noble values.
2. Realize you aren’t your title.
3. Demand excellence from yourself, first.
4. Call for, and enable excellence. (Emphasis on enable.)
5. Don’t believe your own press. People aren’t telling you the full truth.
6. Serve.
7. Sit at the side not the head.
8. Brag about others. Fools make others feel they don’t matter.
9. Say thanks. Gratitude softens arrogance.
10. Invite feedback.
11. Ask as well as tell. Curiosity reflects humility. Warning: questions may be control-tools. I confess that I use questions to control conversations and divert attention from myself.
12. Do the opposite of the arrogant leader list.

Bonus:

Teamwork requires humility. Dennis Perkins wrote: “Into the Storm: Lessons in Teamwork from the Treacherous Sydney to Hobart Ocean Race.” He became a crew member on one of the racing boats. During our conversations, he shared lessons in humility. (6 min. 30 sec.)

How do arrogant leaders behave?

How can leaders develop and/or express humility?