Month: July 2013

A series of surprises.
“I’m really disappointed in Mary’s performance. I may have to let her go. It’s sad. She was clearly the best candidate for the job when we recruited her last year.” But Bill was hard pressed to give his executive coach one concrete example of her sub-par performance. Asked why he had changed his mind about Mary, he suggested, “Well, in important meetings she sprawls in her chair, with her arms and legs all stretched out. It’s unprofessional.”

Bill was asked to mimic Mary’s posture, then describe what HE felt. He reset, thought a moment and frowned, puzzled. “Uh, very relaxed, comfortable, sort of opened up!” And how would he approach a problem if he were sitting like that? To his evident surprise, he blurted out, “Differently. Kind of curious, no holds barred.” Keeping this in mind in the coming months as he assessed Mary’s performance, Bill began to recognize that her results were in fact outstanding. Her next performance appraisal put her at the top of Bill’s team.

Future blog topics
Where are we going with all this? Last week we noted that smart and successful leaders can make poor decisions without being aware why. Here are several types of internal processes and some organizational processes they can affect.

Internal processes:
Somatic: Bill, above, almost made a bad personnel decision by misinterpreting Mary’s body language. And in mimicking her posture, he learned he learned he could change his own awareness. Our mind and body are tightly integrated.

Emotional: the Greeks and Descartes tried to separate rational and emotional thought. But research over the past twenty years has shown that they are tightly linked and you ignore this at your peril. Many of our memories and schema are steeped in strong but unconscious emotions.

Thinking, deciding, doing: much, probably most, of our mental life is unconscious; sometimes this is useful, sometimes it is toxic; but unless we are aware of and manage our awareness of these states, our decisions and behaviors may be more random than intentional.

Creative: our brain creates models (schema) in part to husband limited energy. We run our brain on about 40 watts, like a dim light bulb, much less than a typical PC. So many thought patterns are learned, then shifted into unconscious and more efficient memory. Trying to be creative runs against this default mode and requires effort and practice.

These can either distort or improve key behaviors. Self-awareness is the first step towards enhancing in using them to enhance how we create and lead the following

Organizational processes
Managing
Developing and influencing others
Improving team performance
Leading change initiatives
Innovating
Designing and facilitating effective strategy development and implementation
Building high performing, sustainable organizational cultures

In upcoming blogs, we will explore how to increase self-awareness, then try new practices to boost leadership skills. Here’s another exercise to try:

Where have I been?
1-On a plain sheet of paper placed sideways (landscape mode), draw a line down the left-hand side. Put a plus (+) at its top and a minus (-) at its bottom. Now draw a horizontal line at the middle across the whole page. The horizontal line represents the passage of time in your life. The vertical line marks how happy or unhappy you were as time passed.

2-Place your pencil at the intersection of the two lines and, as you reflect on your life to date, draw the line of how you felt as your life unfolded.

3-After you complete the line, write in key events that correspond to the high and low points of your line. At each event, stop to think about your surroundings at the time, what you saw, what you heard, what you felt. Take time to focus on each of these senses until you are almost back in the experience. Then shake it off and relax. DON’T READ FURTHER UNTIL YOU COMPLETE THE EXERCISE

Look back at your exercise
Now review what happened. How vivid were your memories? Did they evoke sights, sounds, other sensory recollections? Did you experience different emotions? If so, how strong were the sensations and emotions?

Jot down a few sentences about, first, what you observed about your reactions during the exercise, then what you learned from it. When you’re done assess and write down your willingness to do, and to engage during, the exercise using a simple scale:

Supple: easy
Stiff: took time to begin or get into it
Resistant: very uncomfortable, hard to finish the line
Rigid: coudn’t finish the line or couldn’t even begin it

Lessons learned
There’s a lot going on inside our minds in many different ways that we may not be aware of. All of it can dominate our leadership behavior without our knowing it. And our disposition to explore this phenomenon can range from very willing to totally averse.

Next blog (NOTE: beginning bi-weekly posting, Friday, August 9th)
PACEM and the new management paradigm.

Tom is founder of Thomson-Roy Advisors, a firm providing international strategy consulting and senior leadership development. He is also a Program Director at The Mahler Company and an instructor in MBA and Executive Education programs in business schools in the US and overseas. He was an international executive with the Michelin Group for nearly thirty years, working in over forty countries while holding positions in law, finance, emerging market business development and global strategy. Tom is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Virginia Law School. Please contact him on LinkedIn or at tomroyjr@gmail.com.

In Garrison Keillor’s fictional community of Lake Wobegon, “the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”

As it turns out, this depiction is not limited to Lake Wobegon. One of the most documented findings in psychology is the average person’s ability to believe extremely flattering things about him or herself. We generally think that we possess a host of desirable traits and that we’re free of the most unattractive ones.

And this is particularly true of high-achievers who deem themselves to be more intelligent, more fair-minded and even better drivers than others. What about you? Do you:

• Overestimate your contribution to successful project?
• Exaggerate your team’s impact on company performance and profitability?
• Have a high opinion of your professional skills and standing in relation to your peers?

The fact that successful people tend to be a bit delusional isn’t all bad. Our belief in our wonderfulness gives us confidence. Even though we are not as good as we think we are, this confidence actually helps us be better than we would become if we did not believe in ourselves.

Here’s the Catch:
While confidence and a fair view of one’s capabilities and strengths are essential, over-confidence and an elevated sense of worth can to lead to ineffective relationships, poor decision making and ultimate failure in our leadership and our business. When we focus on proving, justifying or defending ourselves, we cut ourselves off from opportunities to understand others’ perspectives, get more accurate information and tap into the best solutions.

In other words, according to the great executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, the same beliefs that helped us get to here – our current level of success, can inhibit us from making the changes needed to get to there – the next level that we have the potential to reach.

Less Confidence, More Leadership Success
In the Harvard Business Review article, “Less-Confident People Are More Successful” , Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic asserts that a moderately low level of self-confidence is more likely to make you successful. Don’t confuse this with a very low degree of self-confidence. Excessive fear, anxiety and stress will inhibit performance, impede decision-making and undermine interpersonal relationships.

If you’re serious about becoming a strong leader, lowering your self-confidence can serve as a strong ally. Yes, this may seem counter-intuitive, but it works! Here’s why:

• It motivates you to work harder and prepare more effectively
• It makes you pay attention to negative feedback and be self-critical.
• It reduces your chances of coming across as arrogant or sell-deluded.

Management Success Tip:
Get in the habit of getting feedback – ask key people in your life how you can improve. Recruit them in helping you get from where you are (which can be a pretty great place) to where you want to be (which can be even better). Your first inclination when people point out areas for improvement may well be to believe that they are ‘wrong’ or ‘confused’. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Be open to the fact that they may well be right and you may well be the one who is confused.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

• Build your skills with The Effective Manager.
• Sign up for Quick Wins: 101 Management Tips.
• Find performance boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
• Listen to The Business Edge Internet Radio for success tips.
• Copyright © 2013 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach.

Great management is no accident. It’s the result of deliberate effort to focus on what’s important vs urgent.

Managing values- what the business, firm or agency professes to stand for – is one of those important things.

So many companies have a values statement on the wall. But ask any employee or even top managers what their values are and, yes, some can rattle them off. But then go further and ask this question: How would I know it if I see it? Then you probably will get a blank stare of some mumble jumble answer.

This is When You Need CPR:

1. Create
Organizations often tout their values – accountability, innovation, integrity, quality, respect, teamwork – but when is the last time you asked if these values have been defined in behavioral terms? Does the company know what “”respect “for example looks like, feels like or smells like?

In a leadership development program for a growing hospitality company, each module of the training included an exercise called “Values in Action”. Here’s an example. Your staff and customers would see and know “integrity” because you would:

• Admit mistakes – don’t blame others, take responsibility to solve the problem.
• Do what you say you were going to do – and if you can’t, say so.
• Lead by example in both personal and business conduct.
• Commit yourself to both the project and the team.

2. Practice:
The practice part is a bit more challenging. This involves actually doing what you say you value. A critical part of strong leadership is the degree to which what you profess and what you practice are in alignment. So here’s a exercise for you to do each week.

• Pick one value you want to practice. Don’t be an over-achiever and try to accomplish more. Start small and then build.
• Ask how can I demonstrate this value? For example, if it’s “respect”, then who are the folks I want to show respect to and how will I do it? It could be as simple as not interrupting Mary when she gets long winded.
• Assess the end of the week what specific things you did to exemplify this particular value? What might have been opportunities you missed? For example, when Joe came in to my office and said…. I could have said this…..
• Pick another value and go through the same process the following week. What you’ll find is awareness plus focus plus motivation leads to change.

3. Reinforce
The reinforcement part requires even more effort. Reinforcement involves specific and deliberate application of affirmation, encouragement and reward for positive behavior. This can be done through positive feedback when you see an employee treating a customer with respect; or it could be part of the annual performance appraisal process; or it could be done by storytelling – a powerful way to communicate what we value and how we behave around here.

Management Success Tip:

Values are important. They describe how you relate to your staff, customers, investors and suppliers. Numbers tell you how much there is of something, not if it is right. Values tell you whether something is right for you and your company. And when values have been defined in behavioral terms then you, as a manger, can lead more effectively.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

• Build your skills with The Effective Manager.
• Sign up for Quick Wins: 101 Management Tips.
• Find performance boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
• Listen to The Business Edge Internet Radio for success tips.
• Copyright © 2013 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach.