Leadership Viewpoint

Determination is a trait that makes us crazy when we deal with it in others; yet every successful person has a healthy dose of it! Think about a determined child – how do they behave? Repeatedly going after the one thing that they are not supposed to have? Relentlessly asking for the toy that’s too expensive? Mercilessly poking their sibling until they get a rise out of him or her? In our efforts to encourage children to behave in socially acceptable ways, we sometimes go too far. Some kids wind up caving in completely and applying that learned behavior to all aspects of their life. Of course, that is rarely what the parents had intended. Different children respond differently to similar parental feedback, so one child may become passive, while his or her sibling may actually become even more determined.

Our workforce is comprised of these children, albeit a few years later, and whatever conditioning their parents did is ours to contend with, or reap the benefits of, today. Can we change their level of determination at this stage of life? The answer, of course, is ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The odds of influencing a largely passive adult and turning him or her into an assertive, determined performer are slim. It is rare to see wholesale changes in people. More realistically, we can expect to see refinements in the behavior patterns that are typically exhibited. Think back to a parent conditioning a child. The key to altering behavior then was consistent feedback. Guess what? It still is!

This means that far more than annual reviews is needed. First, we need to hire people with the basic attributes the position demands. Then, to successfully mold our team, we need to provide each person with consistent feedback about our expectations, their current behavior and the gaps as we see them. Just as important, we must also consistently tell them where they excel, to reinforce their positive behavior. Just as it was with children, individuals will respond differently to feedback, so we must alter our feedback accordingly. It is, perhaps, the most important work that any leader does. After all, if we take care of and groom our people, they will take care of the business.

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Over the past couple of years, we’ve witnessed a very strange shift in the world of job search. We have received a number of inquiries from parents, looking for leadership development positions for their children. Can you imagine learning about leadership from a person with so little initiative and self esteem that he or she allows mommy or daddy to conduct his or her job search? We cannot.

In response to these requests, we inform the parent that the mere fact that the applicant is not inquiring personally disqualifies him or her from consideration. Most parents have been appreciative of the direct feedback. Yesterday, however, an irate mother fired back an angry letter quoting a leadership firm in Toronto that responded favorably to the same inquiry that we had rejected. Besides relief that we will not be involved with an angry and dysfunctional family, we are left to ponder reasonable standards for the workplace. As trainers and consultants, we place high value on “teaching others to fish”. Yet, in this case, an industry colleague has dropped reasonable standards.

As business leaders, it is incumbent on us to place high expectations on our people. We’ve heard rhetoric about the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’, typically from President Bush referring to students from poor areas. Politics aside, ‘low expectations’ are extremely damaging in the workplace. When we open the door to low standards for one person, it becomes too easy to rationalize it the next time. Clearly if you want to build a great business, it is critical to hire and develop a great workforce to run it. Aim high, and encourage your workforce to join you at the top!

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As youngsters, most of us try to be like everybody else. Our goal is to position ourselves as one of the gang, to fit in. Years later, in business, it is critically important to stand out, to position ourselves as unique or expert in some regard.

Let’s think about this with respect to a typical professional office. Some of the typical, positive positions include:

Strategist
Presenter
Idea Seller
Computer Geek
Numbers Person
Developer of People
Negotiator
Listener
Troubleshooter
Detail Person

The positions overlap, and most of us fill all of these to some extent. To assess your current positioning, ask yourself, “For which of these areas do my colleagues really on count me?” When someone comes to you for advice, in which area are they most likely to need support? If you are all over the board, either you are brilliant at everything, or you are not successfully positioned as much of anything.

If you are capable of excelling in all these roles, you may want to consider focusing your energies on the one or two areas you enjoy that are most highly valued at your organization. The key is to have management recognize your outstanding abilities. Take care not to be regarded as ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. That may prove a recipe for disposability. Just as the white Wonder Bread of years ago has been largely replaced by a myriad of specialty breads, generalists have also been largely replaced by a myriad of specialists. Be certain to position yourself well so an ‘expert’ doesn’t nudge you out of your workplace.

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As you are working with your clients, it’s critically important to ensure that they always feel that working with you is of value. By definition, value is what they get for the money. To increase it, either cost must go down, or what they receive must go up. If you’re a discounter, you probably choose to take price down, and you may try to cut the costs of your goods and services accordingly.

If you are a premium seller, then you try to add to what the client receives. The ideal addition is something that is very valuable to the client, but a negligible cost to you. To identify such items, stand back and look at everything you have at your disposal, not just your typical product/service offerings. Value-added items are often from resources that you don’t typically sell. They may be adjunct goods and services, or they may be exposure or ‘connections’ related. In many service industries, sellers add extra services – a package deal for instance.

We sometimes see sellers set up client networking opportunities. One of my colleagues arranges a large meeting with outside speakers quarterly for his clientele. His clients all meet one another and receive a morning of informative talks from area experts in non-competing fields. These experts receive exposure to a group of potential clients, and are generally grateful for the opportunity. It’s a clear win-win and everybody feels indebted to him.

Think about your own business. What can you do to add value to your clientele? What can you afford to give away, simply as a privilege of doing business with you? What can you do that nobody else in your field does for their clients? How can you make the experience of working with you better than working with anyone else?

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This morning the news is hitting that Barack Obama, Illinois Senator and candidate for President, spent four years as a child studying at a Muslim school in Indonesia. Because he supposedly hadn’t ‘revealed’ this before, it is being touted as ‘big news’.

It strikes me that the distance between attending a Muslim school for four years as a child and Muslim extremists is about as far as a child attending a Catholic school for four years and the Pope. If your family is living in Indonesia, and you want your children to get a good education, the odds are that you will send the child to a private school, which will most likely be Muslim.

Also concerning, this ‘news’ was discovered and released by Hilary Clinton’s campaign people. What kind of horrible campaign do we have ahead of us? Are we doomed to another round of silly exposés, or might we actually discuss issues that matter to our lives?

As for many Americans’ fear of everything Muslim, please remain calm. The vast majority of Muslims are warm, loving peaceful people. They are at least as horrified by Muslim extremists as the rest of us. Rather than fearing every Muslim, we would do well to engage and befriend them. It is the breaking down of barriers that leads to understanding, acceptance and ultimately peace. Press hysterics over nothing only serve to widen our divide and feed stereotypes. This hits our workplace and adds to diversity issues. We can and must do better.

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They come in all shapes and sizes. People and behaviors that demand and then waste our time seem to blanket the day. What to do?

Junk Mailers
They hit us at home, at the office, in snail mail, via email, and even in our blogs. They put flyers on cars, and load up our newspapers with their brochures. We are inundated, and the effect is that we tend to look past the messages that we would actually like to see because they are lost in the shuffle.

Eliminate – Don’t even set the junk mail and flyers on the table. Sort it immediately and file it directly in the garbage can.
Systematize – Consistently employ spam filters, junk mail filters, and visually scan out the junk.
Delegate – Even if you don’t have a staff, delegate physical organization to specialists. If this doesn’t come naturally to you, find an ‘organizer’ and have them set up your work space for efficiency.

Phone Interruptions
Some people prefer phone calls for simple issues that don’t require discussion. The problem with this is that it interrupts, and likely doesn’t match your schedule or priorities. Then, once they get you on the phone, they talk, and talk and talk!

Eliminate – Tell repeat offenders that you really prefer email, or that you cannot spend time with them during the workday, or, when feasible, to go away altogether (depending on who it is!).
Systematize – Caller ID is a huge help with this. Screen your calls. Then, when it is convenient for you, respond to their voice message via email whenever no discussion is required.
Delegate – Often the people who drive me crazy are the favorites of one of my colleagues. If that happens with you too, see if you can have the colleague act as the primary point of contact.

Improving our use of time takes constant vigilance. Send consistent messages to those around you and do everything possible to clear your life of the distractions that deter your efforts.

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Think about the people that you choose to hire. Now think about the ones that you would rehire. My bet is that they meet Bob Burg’s criteria (Endless Referrals) of being people that:

You know
You like
You trust

This, essentially, is the point of business networking. If people don’t know you and cannot find you, they can’t hire you. Hence, at the most superficial level, you must get your name out there and raise awareness. This is by far the easiest of the three criteria.

If they know you and can’t stand to be near you, they will not hire you. Therefore, the ability to get along with others is a necessity. There are a myriad of sources to learn how to get along with other people and how to network, yet many people do a very poor job of it. They arrive at a meeting, talk about themselves and stuff unsolicited sales materials into people’s hands. To connect with others well, ask them about their successes and interests. Get them talking about, and show an interest in, positive aspects of their lives, and they’ll think you’re a wonderful conversationalist. Importantly, don’t talk about yourself unless you are asked. Additionally, be careful to give them appropriate personal space. In the U.S., that’s 2 to 3 feet away from their face. People that creep in too close make others uncomfortable.

Once they know you and like you, you have a chance for them to learn to trust you. Trust takes more time. At a business level, trust is based simply on doing what you said you would do when you said you would do it at an appropriate quality standard. It sounds basic, yet pitifully few businesses do it consistently. Before a businessperson will spend money with you, they may want to see you in action a few times. This makes volunteer work with community and professional organizations very important. It is not sufficient to just show up on occasion. Moreover, you must contribute to the greater good and demonstrate your skills, character and dependability.

For more information on this, check out Bob Burg’s book, Endless Referrals. It’s simple, clear and concise.

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Perhaps the most challenging trait for fast paced leaders is working with others who are paced differently. We’re not referring to people who aren’t peers with respect to intelligence, rather we mean that the pace or style of their thought processes and communication are different. When a leader expresses frustration, whether verbally or through facial and body gestures, with somebody else’s slower or just different processing style, communication can shut down and become uncomfortable for everyone present.

From the fast paced person’s perspective, the slower paced style may seem pedantic and boring. It may even feel as if it will take the process off track by interrupting the natural flow of thought and ideas. For the slower paced person, the fast pace may appear to skip important steps, taking on unnecessary risk and leaving people out of the process. The fast pace may feel like pressure and unnecessary rushing.

In reality, it’s when the two styles can work together successfully that the best, most comprehensive solutions typically come to the fore. Often, it takes a third style, someone that can facilitate the two more extreme styles, to assist the process. It’s ideal to structure meetings on important issues accordingly whenever possible. When it happens in unplanned situations, it helps to remind yourself that the diversity of approaches may lead to a better solution. Then accommodate your colleague’s style and pace as gracefully as possible, and clearly communicate your appreciation of the differences.

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Think about the very best presentations you’ve ever witnessed. What did they have in common? Now recall a really poor presentation. How was it different? My hunch is that the great presentations had the following in common:

Enthusiasm or passion – the speaker seemed to really care about what he or she was talking about. It was conveyed via gestures, voice emphasis and substance.

Connected to you – the speaker spoke in terms that you could relate to, about a topic that was relevant to you in some way. It was neither above nor below your intellectual comfort zone. The odds are that you also agreed with some aspect of what the speaker discussed.

Simple and easy to follow – the speaker didn’t clutter his or her case with extraneous information or marginal points. Rather, the talk was focused and clear. Points seemed to flow appropriately and hang together well.

Clear visual aids – whatever was used was large enough to be seen, and clear. It actually supported what was said rather than the other way around.

Now let’s recall that really poor presentation. The odds are that at least three of the four items listed above were badly compromised. Perhaps the speaker’s nerves or speaking style got in the way of enthusiasm, or worse, the speaker was forced to talk about a topic he or she didn’t believe in. If it didn’t seem to make sense, the issue could have been one of organization or clutter. Maybe it was just not a topic that you could connect with.

The next time you are asked to make a presentation, keep it simple, enthusiastic, clear and connect it to your audience. Preparation is the path.

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Most of us have worked for people who have control issues. This is the person who supposedly assigns responsibility for a task, and then is constantly ‘butting in’ to the leader’s efforts as the job progresses. Assuming that the person who has been put in charge of the project or task is competent, some of the behavioral differences between ‘oversight’ and ‘controlling’ include:

Oversight
Regularly scheduled checkpoints and milestones
Controlling
Popping in uninvited and asking specific questions

Oversight
Asking if there is an area where assistance is needed
Controlling
Initiating assistance where none has been requested

Oversight
Referring routine questions to the person assigned the responsibility
Controlling
Answering questions about the project personally

Oversight
Guiding the project leader through any emergencies
Controlling
Taking over to ensure success in an emergency

Oversight
Setting communication and progress norms with the project leader
Controlling
Calling/emailing and requesting information ad hoc out of curiosity

If you have an assignment where the senior person is exhibiting the ‘controlling’ behaviors, it is incumbent on you to formally initiate an agreement on a better way forward. It is fair and reasonable to let others know how you like to be managed and how to obtain your best performance.

If you see yourself in any of these controlling behaviors, don’t be surprised if you find that one of the following occurs:

1. Tension and avoidance from the person to whom you gave the assignment
2. Lack of initiative from the person to whom you gave the assignment

Competent people naturally want to have room to operate as they see fit. Cramping their style and ‘butting in’ causes stress, and is often noted as a contributing factor to turnover in exit interviews. To avoid this situation, establish and stick to an oversight plan that will provide you with adequate timely information to be supportive (and manage up) without taking over or ‘butting in’. Understand too that this is more art than science. As such, ask the project leader how he or she would prefer to be managed. Each person is different, so try to accommodate that and you’ll go a long way toward successful oversight.

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