Tag: Leadership Development

  • High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It

    “There’s no team without trust,” (….”and no tribe without trust and direct feedback” cb) says Paul Santagata, Head of Industry at Google. He knows the results of the tech giant’s massive two-year study on team performance, which revealed that the highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety, the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake ...”or speak your truth”…cb). Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs.

    Ancient evolutionary adaptations explain why psychological safety is both fragile and vital to success in uncertain, interdependent environments. The brain processes a provocation by a boss, competitive coworker, or dismissive subordinate as a life-or-death threat. The amygdala, the alarm bell in the brain, ignites the fight-or-flight response, hijacking higher brain centers. This “act first, think later” brain structure shuts down perspective and analytical reasoning. Quite literally, just when we need it most, we lose our minds. While that fight-or-flight reaction may save us in life-or-death situations, it handicaps the strategic thinking needed in today’s workplace.

    Twenty-first-century success depends on another system — the broaden-and-build mode of positive emotion, which allows us to solve complex problems and foster cooperative relationships. Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina has found that positive emotions like trust, curiosity, confidence, and inspiration broaden the mind and help us build psychological, social, and physical resources. We become more open-minded, resilient, motivated, and persistent when we feel safe. Humor increases, as does solution-finding and divergent thinking — the cognitive process underlying creativity.

    When the workplace feels challenging but not threatening, teams can sustain the broaden-and-build mode. Oxytocin levels in our brains rise, eliciting trust and trust-making behavior. This is a huge factor in team success, as Santagata attests: “In Google’s fast-paced, highly demanding environment, our success hinges on the ability to take risks and be vulnerable in front of peers.”

    So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team? Try replicating the steps that Santagata took with his:

    1. Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. We humans hate losing even more than we love winning. A perceived loss triggers attempts to reestablish fairness through competition, criticism, or disengagement, which is a form of workplace-learned helplessness. Santagata knows that true success is a win-win outcome, so when conflicts come up, he avoids triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking, “How could we achieve a mutually desirable outcome?”

    2. Speak human to human. Underlying every team’s who-did-what confrontation are universal needs such as respect, competence, social status, and autonomy. Recognizing these deeper needs naturally elicits trust and promotes positive language and behaviors. Santagata reminded his team that even in the most contentious negotiations, the other party is just like them and aims to walk away happy. He led them through a reflection called “Just Like Me,” which asks you to consider:

    • This person has beliefs, perspectives, and opinions, just like me.
    • This person has hopes, anxieties, and vulnerabilities, just like me.
    • This person has friends, family, and perhaps children who love them, just like me.
    • This person wants to feel respected, appreciated, and competent, just like me.
    • This person wishes for peace, joy, and happiness, just like me.

    3. Anticipate reactions and plan countermoves. “Thinking through in advance how your audience will react to your messaging helps ensure your content will be heard, versus your audience hearing an attack on their identity or ego,” explains Santagata.

    Skillfully confront difficult conversations head-on by preparing for likely reactions. For example, you may need to gather concrete evidence to counter defensiveness when discussing hot-button issues. Santagata asks himself, “If I position my point in this manner, what are the possible objections, and how would I respond to those counterarguments?” He says, “Looking at the discussion from this third-party perspective exposes weaknesses in my positions and encourages me to rethink my argument.”

    Specifically, he asks:

    • What are my main points?
    • What are three ways my listeners are likely to respond?
    • How will I respond to each of those scenarios?

    4. Replace blame with curiosity. If team members sense that you’re trying to blame them for something, you become their saber-toothed tiger. John Gottman’s research at the University of Washington shows that blame and criticism reliably escalate conflict, leading to defensiveness and — eventually — to disengagement. The alternative to blame is curiosity. If you believe you already know what the other person is thinking, then you’re not ready to have a conversation. Instead, adopt a learning mindset, knowing you don’t have all the facts. Here’s how:

    • State the problematic behavior or outcome as an observation, and use factual, neutral language. For example, “In the past two months there’s been a noticeable drop in your participation during meetings and progress appears to be slowing on your project.”
    • Engage them in an exploration. For example, “I imagine there are multiple factors at play. Perhaps we could uncover what they are together?”
    • Ask for solutions. The people who are responsible for creating a problem often hold the keys to solving it. That’s why a positive outcome typically depends on their input and buy-in. Ask directly, “What do you think needs to happen here?” Or, “What would be your ideal scenario?” Another question leading to solutions is: “How could I support you?”

    5. Ask for feedback on delivery. Asking for feedback on how you delivered your message disarms your opponent, illuminates blind spots in communication skills, and models fallibility, which increases trust in leaders. Santagata closes difficult conversations with these questions:

    • What worked and what didn’t work in my delivery?
    • How did it feel to hear this message?
    • How could I have presented it more effectively?

    For example, Santagata asked about his delivery after giving his senior manager tough feedback. His manager replied, “This could have felt like a punch in the stomach, but you presented reasonable evidence and that made me want to hear more. You were also eager to discuss the challenges I had, which led to solutions.”

    6. Measure psychological safety. Santagata periodically asks his team how safe they feel and what could enhance their feeling of safety. In addition, his team routinely takes surveys on psychological safety and other team dynamics. Some teams at Google include questions such as, “How confident are you that you won’t receive retaliation or criticism if you admit an error or make a mistake?”

    If you create this sense of psychological safety on your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance.

  • Leading with Grit and Grace

    Leading with Grit and Grace from CB Bowman, CEO Master Corporate Executive Coach

  • Leading with the Power of Humility

    by Dan Rockwel

    View original publication on LeadershipFreak

    The seductions of arrogance wreck leaders, demoralize teams, and destroy organizations.

    “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” (Attributed to Albert Einstein.)

    Everything good in leadership begins with humility.

    Subtleties of arrogance:

    1. Taking offense at slights. A thin skin points to pride. “You deserve better.”
    2. Judging others by unspoken expectations. The “humble-arrogant” are better than others because they hold people to high standards that they don’t meet themselves.
    3. Searching for self-justification. Arrogance circles back on problems – not to find solutions – but in search of reasons it didn’t do wrong.

    The brother of arrogance is disdain.

    All you can do is coerce those you look down on.

    Practice humility:

    Humility is a practice not a destination.

    #1. Acknowledge the subtlety of arrogance.

    Humility begins when you acknowledge arrogance.

    You have puddles of humility and oceans of arrogance, but you judge yourself by the puddles. My own arrogance makes me skeptical of any other option.

    #2. Pursue growth.

    “An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life – becoming a better person.” Leo Tolstoy

    Everyone who develops their leadership knows what they’re working on.

    What leadership behavior will you practice today?

    Practice is intentional repetition that includes reflection and course adjustment.

    #3. Pick up the trash.

    Don’t simply tell people to pick up the trash. Pick it up yourself.

    No job is menial to the humble.

    Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, was famous for picking up trash. “Every night you’d see him coming down the street, walking close to the gutter, picking up every McDonald’s wrapper and cup along the way,” former McDonald’s CEO Fred Turner told author Alan Deutschman. “He’d come into the store with both hands full of cups and wrappers.” (Daniel Coyle in the Culture Code)

    What are the subtitles of arrogance?

    How might leaders practice humility?

  • 10 Small Things Successful People Do Every Day

    Image Designed by Freepik

    By Lolly Daskal
    View original Publication on LollyDaskal.com

    Every day, we’re surrounded by life lessons–little self-contained bits of truth that can help each of us to be a more successful manager, a greater boss, a superior leader, a better person.

    It’s easy to dismiss these ideas because they’re packaged in such small bites, but they can be a great way to positively connect with some of the world’s great wisdom.

    Here are 10 of my favorites:

    1. You have to start somewhere. The first step to getting anywhere is deciding you’re not willing to stay where you are. The least helpful thing you can do is to wait for perfection before taking action. Start where you are, use what you have and do what you can to succeed.

    2. There is always a demand for your supply of respect. Base your attitude in life on how you want to be treated and show respect even to people who don’t deserve it. How you treat others is not a reflection of their character but of yours.

    3. You win when everybody wins. Prepare to win and expect to win, but remember that to be a real winner you must also make winners of those around you.

    4. If your presence doesn’t add value, your absence won’t be felt. The secret to success is no secret at all–it’s finding ways to add value to people’s lives. If you want to be rich in the truest sense of the world, it cannot be about you–it has to include adding value to the lives of those around you.

    5. Focus your attention on what is important. Learn to be disciplined about what you respond to and react to. Not everyone and everything deserves your time, energy and attention. Make conscious choices about what you want to pay attention to and what you want to let go.

    6. All the confidence you will ever need comes from the capabilities you’ve honed. Here’s something I always tell my clients: Confidence comes from believing you are able but competence knows you’re able. Believe in yourself and your possibilities, but know what you are already a master of.

    7. Love what you do or find something else. If you don’t love what you do, you’ll spend the rest of your life being miserable. It’s really that simple. Love what you do and it will never feel like work.

    8. Identify your limits and leverage your fortitude. You will never know your limits unless you push yourself beyond them. The only way to change yourself is to challenge yourself–if you never push, you have direction but no destination.

    9. Know when to forge ahead and when to slow down. The faster we live, the busier we get–but the slower we take things, the deeper we can go. We need both action and reflection in the right balance.

    10. To learn the best, learn from the best. Everyone you meet knows something you don’t. Learning is a treasure, so connect with the expertise of those around you at every opportunity,

    The biggest difference between successful people and not successful people, are the successful people know that taking small daily actions will lead to big results.

  • Getting beyond the BS of leadership literature

    By Jeffrey Pfeffer

    View original publication on McKinsey.com

    Management books and commentaries often oversimplify, seldom providing useful guidance about the skills and behavior needed to get things done. Here’s a better reading list for leaders.

    The almost insatiable demand for leadership studies is a natural outgrowth of the all-too-frequent leadership failures in government, business, and nonprofits. Few people trust their leaders, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer surveys, among others.1 Gallup data show low levels of employee engagement worldwide, while the Conference Board finds job satisfaction at a low ebb and executive tenures decreasing.2 Other research consistently indicates that companies give their own leadership-development efforts low marks. Leaders aren’t doing a good job for themselves or their workplaces, and things don’t seem to be improving.

    This consuming interest in leadership and how to make it better has spawned a plethora of books, blogs, TED talks, and commentary. Unfortunately, these materials are often wonderfully disconnected from organizational reality and, as a consequence, useless for sparking improvement. Maybe that’s one reason the enormous resources invested in leadership development have produced so few results. Estimates of the amount spent on it range from $14 billion to $50 billion a year in the United States alone.3

    The limits of morality tales

    Despite the many shortcomings of leadership instruction, some books and articles do provide fruitful guidance on how to be a better, more effective leader. And there’s scattered information about what skills and behavior are needed to get things done and how to develop them. Sadly, and for a number of reasons, there’s a scarcity of useful material. Here’s why.

    The first and maybe most pernicious problem is that thinking on leadership has become a sort of morality tale. There are writers who advocate authenticity, attention to employees’ well-being, telling the truth, building trust, being agreeable, and so forth. A smaller number of empirical researchers, contrarily, report evidence on the positive effects of traits and behavior such as narcissism, self-promotion, rule breaking, lying, and shrewd maneuvering on salaries, getting jobs, accelerating career advancement, and projecting an aura of power. Part of this discrepancy—between the prescriptions of the vast leadership industry and the data on what actually produces career success—stems from the oft-unacknowledged tendency to confuse what people believe ought to be true with what actually is. And underlying that is an associated confirmation bias: the tendency to see, and remember, what you’re motivated to believe.

    Second, this moral framing of leadership substantially oversimplifies the real complexity of the dilemmas and choices leaders confront. An essay on the 500th anniversary of the writing of Machiavelli’s The Prince noted that it is sometimes necessary to do bad things to achieve good results.4 Not surprisingly, then, some of the most successful and admired leaders—for example, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy—were above all pragmatists, willing to do what was necessary to achieve important objectives.

    As such, each of them (and many other renowned leaders) changed their positions on decisions and issues and behaved inconsistently. They dissembled and engaged in strategic misrepresentation, not always disclosing their full agendas and plans, in part to avoid provoking opposition. At times, they acted in ways inconsistent with their authentic feelings. Human beings are complex and multidimensional, so not only do bad people do good things and vice versa but the whole idea of good and bad can also be problematic when you consider the knotty dilemmas leaders face deciding whether the ends justify the means.

    Finally, the division of leaders and their actions into good and bad seriously oversimplifies a much more complex reality and continues to reinforce a problematic, trait-based, and personality-centric view of human behavior. As social-psychological research has made clear for decades, people are not only shaped by their enduring traits but also profoundly influenced by cues and constraints that vary by situation. So they adopt different types of behavior and even personas, depending on the circumstances and the various roles they play. Leaders may behave differently within their families and religious institutions than they do at work, to take one example. When individuals are promoted to management, their perspectives change and so too does their behavior. McKinsey research also suggests that the effectiveness of various types of leadership behavior varies with the health of the organization in which they are practiced (see “Leadership in context”).

    Characterizing leaders’ behavior as somehow dependent on inherent traits provides an easy excuse for avoiding the sort of behavior and strategies that may be required to get things done. To take a simple example, people sometimes tell me that they are not networkers, as a way of explaining their reluctance to build the social relationships so necessary for success. I remind them that they were not born walking or using the toilet either. Networking behavior and skills, like all such behavior and skills, can be learned, as University of Chicago sociologist Ronald Burt has nicely demonstrated.

     

     

  • Decoding leadership

    What skills and behaviors make a good leader effective? Here are the traits that matter.

    Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford Graduate School of Business says that “This consuming interest in leadership has spawned a plethora of books, blogs, TED talks and commentary [that] are often wonderfully disconnected from organizational reality, and as a consequence, useless for sparking improvement”.

    McKinsey found that 4 out of 20 behaviors explain 89% of the variance between strong and weak leaders.Here are the traits that matter

    Click here to view on Mckinsey

  • Putting an End to Leaders Self-Serving Behavior

    by Morela Hernandez

    View original publication on MITSloan

    Although we might hope that leaders in business environments will embrace their decision-making responsibilities with a clear head and an open heart, empirical research has shown otherwise. Instead, business leaders are often selfish. Access to resources in many organizations is a moving target, leaving many managers feeling protective of what’s theirs. And when they take more than their fair share — extra resources for themselves at the expense of others — they often do it because they honestly think they are entitled to these resources and believe they have earned the right to take more.

    Where does this kind of entitlement come from?

    As I’ve tried to reconcile current political events — such as the European Union’s reaction to Brexit, the continuing global refugee crisis, and the ongoing debates in the United States about tax and health care reform — with scholarly work on ambiguity and decision-making, I’ve come to think that feeling entitled to a larger share of a resource might come not from objective assessments of reality but rather from what social scientists call motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning occurs when people “selectively notice, encode, and retain information that is consistent with their desires.” People use this kind of reasoning to reach conclusions that help them support their self-serving beliefs. After all, reasoning, it has been said, “was designed by evolution to help us win arguments.”

    Understanding the effects of self-serving beliefs is a tricky business. In the last decade of research in behavioral ethics, for instance, scholars have moved away from a “bad apples” approach in which only people with poor moral characteristics are deemed likely to behave unethically. Instead, researchers have examined how people can engage in self-serving behaviors while convinced of the rightness and fairness of doing so. Few studies, however, have explored the circumstances in which this type of selfishness — one that comes with a sense of entitlement and justification — is likely to arise.

    Working alongside my colleague Laura Noval of the Imperial College Business School in London, we sought to understand how organizations enable self-serving behavior. Specifically, we investigated how certain contextual and individual characteristics can facilitate motivated reasoning aimed at justifying self-serving decisions.

    We explored this issue through two experimental studies, one using a hypothetical business decision-making scenario (in which 395 people participated, 52% women) and the other using a behavioral task in the laboratory (in which 239 people participated, 52% women). In both studies, we assigned participants to conditions in which they received either identical performance information with respect to another party (strong, unambiguous context), or in which they and the other party were favored by different performance criteria (weak, ambiguous context). In the latter case, participants could use motivated reasoning to convince themselves that their own performance criterion was more relevant for the task at hand, thereby convincing themselves that they deserved larger shares of the resource.

  • What CEOs Get Wrong About Vision and How to Get It Right

    By Dan Ciampa

    View original publication on MIT Sloan

    When a leader must implement a new strategy, especially one that requires new systems, processes, and perhaps people, it is the start of a new era. Success requires more than the right combination of capital and technology; it also requires a critical mass of employees to adopt new behaviors and ways of thinking. But too often, CEOs and boards in these situations think through the capital and technology issues much more carefully than those involving behavior and attitudes. That imbalance is a primary reason new strategies fail. And, in addition to disrupting a company, failure can derail a promising executive career — especially if a CEO took over to guide the company in a new direction.

    When new behavior and new ways of thinking are required, an essential step is for the CEO, the board, and key managers to have an image in their minds of what the organization will look and act like after achieving its strategic goals. Just as great athletes are guided by a mental picture of the perfect jump shot or golf swing, key players in the organization need a consistent picture in their minds of what success will look like. That’s where a vision comes in.

    The term “vision” is used often in business; companies frequently talk about “our mission, vision, and values.” The trouble is that most of the time, the word “vision” is used incorrectly. When CEOs say they’ve defined their company’s vision, I ask them to explain it to me. Many respond with something like, “Our vision is to be the most innovative, agile company in our industry.” To which I reply, “That’s a mission, not a vision.”

    In cases like these, the so-called vision merely repeats what is already in the strategy, and, worse, does nothing to emotionally engage the people who are being asked to implement it. A leader’s vision — particularly if that leader needs to bring about significant change in the organization — should start as a vivid, credible image of an ideal future state. The clearer a CEO is about what people should do differently to achieve new, challenging objectives, the greater his or her chances of achieving the changes necessary for success. New behavior doesn’t come from missions, however aspirational, but from deep, emotional commitment to doing things differently.

  • 19 Traits of Bad Bosses

     

  • Coaching the Uncoachable Executive

    How do you help leaders who don’t want help?

    by Steve Albrecht

    View original publication on Psychology Today

    If we take the idea that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink to the business arena, how do companies help their leaders improve their performance or behavior, through coaching, when they don’t think they need it?

    I work with two types of employees when it comes to coaching; pick the one you’d rather be in the room with. One says, “I’m so glad you’re here! I know I’ve got some rough edges, some blind spots, and I need to improve the way I communicate with my staff and my boss. We have a lot to talk about and I want to get right to work.” Chance of success: high.

    The other type says, “I don’t know why you’re here or I’m here. It’s probably because one of my team got hurt feelings and complained. Maybe my style is a bit rough, but I get things done. Besides, the clients love me and I make this place a lot of money. Can we get on with whatever this is? I have a lot of work to do.” Chance of success: poor to middling.

    For help with this thorny issue, I spoke with Jordan Goldrich, COO of the San Diego-based executive coaching firm, CUSTOMatrix. He holds an LCSW license and the Master Certified Executive Coach (MCEC) designation, from the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. Jordan is also a Talent Management Executive with Executive Core, an international Executive Coaching firm.

    When it comes to coaching the executive who doesn’t want to participate in the process, Jordan says, “Most executives who don’t want to be coached are referred by their managers for coaching for several reasons. They’re very valuable because of their technical knowledge or business expertise, but their interpersonal style creates a negative impact on their key stakeholders, direct reports, and superiors. Or, they are part of a leadership development program, where everyone must have coaching, and they don’t want it because they are legitimately too busy, don’t trust or respect the coach, or don’t believe it will be valuable for them.”

    He also sees them having either a lack of insight or a skewed view of their impact on their firm and the people in it. “They’re genuinely not aware of the impact they’re having on others,” he suggests. “Or they recognize they’re having a negative impact but can’t believe their impatience, frustration, anger, and even sarcasm with others is more of a problem than the lack of production, late deadlines, fuzzy thinking, and lack of accountability of the people who are complaining. In addition, many don’t believe they can control their behavior.”

    It’s interesting to note the mindset that Jordan Goldrich sees in these executives and senior leaders who are seen as abrasive. They believe they are like warriors, achieving a level of success in overwhelmingly complex strategic roles.  He says, “They believe they are not being recognized for their contribution. They may even feel they are being disrespected.”

    These internal challenges can manifest in significant hurdles for Jordan as a coach. He says of the abrasive leader as a coachee, “They believe that the request to change is part of a politically-correct culture where, as one executive said to me, ‘Kids are not allowed to play tag because being it will harm their self-esteem.’”

    Their coach must help them uncover their own intrinsic motivation to change. In other words, find a reason they would change this behavior even if they were not getting pressured to change. If the coaching is successful, they conclude that they should change because they want to be more consistent with their own core beliefs and values. He says, “Many I have met are sincerely religious people. Or, they may change because they recognize they want to win or achieve even greater things than they already have.”

    In many situations, Jordan finds self-assessment instruments can help coachees with their insight. He says, “Assessment instruments provide a wealth of information to coachees in an economical way. Their self-ratings on specific items deepen their understanding of their own motivations, personality style, communication style, decision style, and influence style. The assessment reports and our debriefs can combine to create new options for behavior changes. I typically use two self-assessments, plus a 360 evaluation, which may include my interviews with key stakeholders. Since I’m certified in these assessments – Myers-Briggs, FIRO-B, California Personality Inventory, Workplace Big 5, Conflict Dynamics Profile, DISC, and the Hogan Personality Inventory – they are part of my coaching tool kit as well.”

    So, with serious internal and external obstacles in the coachee’s path, how does he prove success? Coaching, like other soft-skills improvements, may not have an obvious immediate benefit, but more of a behavioral and performance shift, which could appear over a span of weeks or months. Obviously, business owners and C-level executives don’t always have a lot of patience for the slow-and-steady route to the improvement approach. Jordan uses subjective evaluations, like feedback from internal customers, peers, superiors and other stakeholders; if the coachee is achieving goals and meeting deadlines; and even employee turnover is a measure.

    Poorly-performing employees sometimes leave under the coachee’s “new and improved” leadership approach because they can no longer hide behind the formerly abrasive behavior of their manager.

    The coaching process is going to benefit those who participate fully. The challenge in all behavior and performance change is getting coachees to leverage their own intrinsic motivations to change. Then they are able to see the wisdom of good ideas, positive suggestions, and the need to embrace them, whether they initially like the coaching intervention or not.

    Dr. Steve Albrecht is a keynote speaker, author, podcaster, and trainer. He focuses on high-risk employee issues, threat assessments, and school and workplace violence prevention. In 1994, he co-wrote Ticking Bombs, one of the first business books on workplace violence. He holds a doctorate in Business Administration (DBA); an M.A. in Security Management; a B.S. in Psychology; and a B.A. in English. He is board certified in HR, security, coaching, and threat management. He worked for the San Diego Police Department for 15 years and has written 17 books on business, HR, and criminal justice subjects.