Do you spend more time explaining or committing?

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I was attending a sales planning session of a global service company in growth mode.  Their Head of Sales kicked off the meeting by asking the sales leaders to think big; outside the box, and not let past and current issues and barriers get in the way.

Each regional sales leader then had approximately 90 minutes to present their plan and receive questions, comments, and feedback on their thinking.

However, instead of first making bold declarations of what they are planning to do and then outlining the barriers and risks and how they were planning to overcome them, the leaders took a very different approach.

They outlined their conservative growth plans, and then they spent the majority of their presentation explaining to the audience the risks and barriers to success, as well as the reasons why they can’t take on a bolder game.

Even their moderate ambitions came with a caveat. In fact, they all had a slide in their presentation outlining the assumptions they were basing their objectives on.

Even though they didn’t say it outright, it was clear to everyone that the leaders were hedging their bets, making their objectives circumstantial and seeding the future justifications, excuses and ‘alibis’ should they not meet their growth objectives.

Unfortunately, I see this mindset and behavior in most companies; leaders oriented around tracking and reporting on the status of things; analyzing why things are working or not working; explaining why progress can’t be bigger, faster. There is no power, creativity, and innovation in this orientation.

The role of leaders is to declare, create, take a stand, and commit to future outcomes in areas that are important for the success and growth of their company. Powerful leaders follow the ‘man-on-the-moon’ approach and put a stake in the ground before having a worked-out plan.

Leaders are not the messengers who report on what is working and not working. They are the authors who create, fulfill, and cause the future. Powerful leaders push their thinking to reach the boldest ideas and outcomes they can.

Powerful sales leaders should be creating their next year, not explaining the barriers and risks to achieving it.

During one of the presentations, one of the senior executives in the room stepped in and expressed disappointment with what he referred to as “the overly conservative objectives,” the sales leader was bringing forth. The sales leader rebutted by saying: “It is not a conservative objective; it is an accurate objective.” This only further highlighted the conservative mindset of the sales leader.

There are no accurate objectives! No one can predict the future. There are only bold guesses/predictions or conservative guesses/predictions. Or, in more enlightened terms: bold stands or conservative stands.

When people believe that there is such a thing as an accurate, correct, or right objective, they stop pushing their thinking; they search for accuracy instead of new possibilities.

In addition, at the end of one of the regional sales leader presentation, the finance leader questioned the sales leader by asking if their forecast was perhaps too high. It didn’t take a second for the regional sales leader to agree and further reduce their number.

This conservative and risk-averse attitude comes from people’s fear of commitment and accountability. People are afraid that if they promise a big commitment, take a risk, and fall short, they would receive retribution.

In most companies, accountability is viewed in a cynical and bad way. What do you expect when accountability is referred to in terms such as “one throat to choke“? No one wants their throat to be choked. People try to cover up the cynicism by using politically correct terms. However, in most companies, accountability means “deliver, or you will get fired!”

So, if you want to transform the conservative and risk-averse mindset in your organization to a bolder and more innovative and big thinking one, start by promoting a culture in which people are encouraged to think big, take risks and make bold commitments.

Then, demonstrate to everyone – by action, not just words – that there are no negative consequences to failing for the right reasons.

Do you just complain or actually do something about it?

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I am constantly blown away by my observation that people in organizations – at all levels – prefer to complain and whine about the things they are not happy about rather than doing something about it.

In fact, when things don’t work effectively, people tend to spend more time covering their behind – i.e., making sure everyone in the universe knows it is not their fault, instead of trying to figure out how to fix the problem.

That is why people rarely step up to outright declare, “You can count on me – I will fix this!” Instead, they prefer to copy the entire universe on their self-protection emails…  or as these are referred to – C.Y.A. or “cover your ass”.

This behavior is very pervasive. I see and hear it everywhere, every day.

In fact, I was in an airport taking a flight the other day. It was not a busy time, so hardly any people in the line. As I was going through security, I couldn’t help but hear the security staff whining and complaining about their supervisor. One of them went on and on about how their supervisor didn’t give them enough time to go to the bathroom. Another added her own criticism about the fact that the supervisor reprimanded her for not doing her job correctly. They were feeding off of each other in a frenzy. It went on for 5 minutes.

First of all, I felt embarrassed for them. It wasn’t appropriate for them to have that conversation in front of the customers – me. However, I guess they were so upset and resigned they didn’t even think about that.

More importantly, I wanted to interrupt and ask: “Did you speak with your supervisor about these issues?. Did you try and do something to correct these small easy-to-fix issues?” However, I didn’t. I am sure the answer would have been a resounding, “NO!”

Everywhere I go, I people-watch and can sometimes find myself inadvertently eavesdropping on conversations. Obviously, I don’t do it rudely or inappropriately, but people tend to speak loudly when they are passionate or upset about something, so I pick up on it – probably an occupational hazard.

It seems that everywhere I go people are complaining and whining about their hardships, rather than making attempts to do something productive about it.

After all, why take responsibility when you can be a victim and blame others for the issues. It is so much easier to exist this way.

However, being a victim comes with a hefty price. Primarily, you stay small, you lose your power to shape and influence your circumstance, and you feel resigned.

The good news is that anyone can change their orientation at will. If you are fed up with the powerless conversations, change the channel, and start engaging in powerful conversations.

This means start making clear and direct requests; it may require you to promise things in return. In addition, it means stop participating in the around-the-cooler bitching sessions, which don’t make any tangible difference other than promoting self-righteousness.

You always have a choice when you are unhappy about your circumstances or predicaments – you can just complain or actually do something about it!

 

Don’t underestimate the power of intention

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I know too many people who don’t have the reality they want personally and/or professionally and they constantly complain about it, blame others or the circumstances for it and overall give excuses for it.

In fact, when I asked one of them the question “How are you doing?” their response was: “Same shit different day!” I have heard different variations on that theme from others…

Contrast that with a real-life story (no names) with two chapters:

Chapter One:

A sales team that was struggling with making their sales targeted numbers for a long time wanted a break. They had enough of wallowing in their sorrows. They wanted a breakthrough; they wanted to start winning and move from a survival mode to a thriving and abundant mode. So, to make a long story short, they had a “come to Jesus” meeting in which they all committed to a future (with specific details) that included making or exceeding their goals every quarter with more and bigger deals. They acknowledged that they had fallen into a “victim mentality” and they committed to stop complaining, blaming and justifying. This commitment was a big deal for them! The first quarter they came close, the second they made it and by the third quarter, they exceeded their results.

Needless to say, everyone was elated. However, with their new success came a lot more work and the new work was much more intense and demanding then they had been used to.

Chapter Two:

After two very successful quarters of record sales results, people were feeling the strains of the long hours and hard work. They had to hire many more people to accommodate their growth, but that was taking longer than everyone had hoped so the brunt of the hard work fell on fewer people.

Everyone felt the stress of over the lack of work/life balance. Even the people who were around before the success had forgotten where they came from.

When you walked the halls of this team you started to hear disgruntled team members engaging in negative conversations again – complaining, blaming and justifying their frustrations. Unfortunately, with time the negativity only increased and with it ownership, dedication and quality deteriorated.

When the team lost its first customer everyone brushed it off and attributed it to the circumstances. However, when their downward trend repeated itself and they had multiple issues with other deals and customers, which lead to them missing their sales results again, it was too late to turn things around.

Commitment and Intention are so powerful. You can understand this phrase, but if you don’t “get it”, trust it, apply it and live it this won’t make a difference.

The punch line is:

If you are dealing with a bad situation or reality and you complain about it you will most likely continue to have that bad reality. I am sure you would agree…

If you are dealing with a bad situation or reality and you commit to changing it, and then you start speaking and acting consistent with your new commitment, it will only be a matter of time – “when”, not “if” – you will turn your predicament around.

However, if you succeed in turning your bad predicament around and you go back to complaining about what you got, or what is not working, it will only be a matter of time – “when”, not “if”- you will lose what you created and return to your old state…

Even if you don’t understand how intention works or if you don’t believe that intention works – it still does!

You can either embrace the concept and figure out how to use it to your advantage, or you can reject and dismiss it and then you will lose the competitive advantage and power that this powerful principle could give you.

Are you dealing with successes and setbacks effectively?

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Whenever you take on a major improvement, breakthrough or transformation in your team or company, it is inevitable that along the way you will have successes and setbacks. 

The bigger you play, the bigger your successes and/or setbacks will be. The only way to minimize the setbacks is to play smaller. The only way to increase the successes is to play bigger.  You will have to determine what is more important for you.

When it comes to successes and/or setbacks mindset is everything.

I was in a meeting with a team that had taken on a big change initiative. We were meeting after two months to review progress and firm up the plan forward. At the start of the meeting team members were sharing and giving updates on what they had achieved in their team projects since the start of the process, where they had seen progress and where they had experienced setbacks or lack of progress.

In one case two managers presented the status of their project, which had to do with building a stronger alignment with their corporate head office finance team in order to simplify the approval process for expenses and customer discounts. They had quite a different outlook on their reality. They started by giving a factual report on what they had achieved and what they had not. Among the items that they didn’t achieve was “A clear agreement with corporate on new spending and discount self-approval levels.”.

One of them went on to say:

“Our relationship with corporate finance is still not working!”

The other manager jumped in with a different take: “It’s true that we didn’t meet our goal of agreeing to clear new self-approval levels, but we have made significant progress and achieved the following results: (1) Corporate acknowledged for the first time that we need more authority, (2) They agreed to work with us to reach the right change, and (3) We have the first meeting scheduled in two weeks. Based on that, our next breakthrough now is to reach that final agreement.”

You could refer to this as the glass-half-empty versus the glass-half-full personalities and mindsets or the optimist versus the pessimist. Both are a valid way to view it. The “Still not working” and “We have accomplished X and now we need to accomplish Y” are two very different paradigms.

  • One owns the progress and the other avoids responsibility.
  • One is looking toward the future and the other from the past.
  • One is oriented around progress and the other around perfection.

When you take on a major improvement, breakthrough or transformation it is critical to stay focused on the future, own the journey, maintain your faith in the direction and keep looking for, and finding accomplishments and proof points for progress. It’s not a cheap spin on a grim reality. It’s a powerful and empowering interpretation that will keep you engaged and compelled to carry on.

When your benchmark for change is perfection, you may feel that you will never achieve it or even get close so you will give up. It is inevitable. But, when you keep seeing small, medium and/or large accomplishments, improvements and other proof points as progress, you will feel compelled and even excited to do more, achieve more and reach higher.

So, next time you feel like saying “X is still not working!” Think again. Look further to find what progress you have made and proclaim that. Then, look further again and declare what is the next breakthrough or progress you will take on next. Use the proof points of real, meaningful and specific signs of progress as the stepping stone to propel you forward to your ultimate future state.

Certain conversations will keep your future open with possibilities and your energy high. Other conversations will keep you cynical and stuck in the past.

I don’t need to ask, but which do you prefer…?

 

How much honesty can you stomach?

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If you ask the senior leaders of any organization how things are going in their organization, they would probably give you an upbeat, positive, optimistic description. If you then ask the shop-floor employees, the same question you would probably hear a different story.

From many years of experience, I can attest that there is often a dissonance between how senior leaders view their organizational and business reality and how employees do. While senior leaders often paint a rosier picture and claim that things are going well, even if there are issues, their people often highlight all the issues and describe things as not going that well.

In addition, employees often express frustrations about their senior leaders. They often say things like:

“We can’t be honest with our managers about the burning issues because they only want to hear good news. As a result, they don’t understand the full extent of the problem and we can’t address and change things…”

If you want to fix or change things or take any aspect of your business to a higher level, you have to start with honesty. You have to make sure employees and managers at all levels feel comfortable and safe to bring up the issues and problems, no matter how ugly or uncomfortable they may be.

Leaders who can stand in front of their superiors, peers, and people and acknowledge: “This isn’t working!” without discounting or sugar-coating the issues have a much greater chance to turn things around and generate breakthroughs.

Unfortunately, so many leaders seem insecure in this area. They seem to be so concerned about how exposing issues would reflect on their personal brand, that their self-preservation concerns hinder their ability to acknowledge and address the issues heads on.

So many leaders come across as politically correct and covering their behinds when talking about the issues. They can’t seem to be able to say: “This is not working. We need to fix it!” Instead, they say things like: “Things are going well, but we have an opportunity to improve…”

Their vague and watered-down pronouncement prevents them from fully owning and addressing their issues. It also weakens their ability to generate urgency to fix what isn’t working. In addition, their lack of blunt honesty hurts their credibility with their people, who usually know exactly how severe the issues are.

Just reflect on any corporate scandal or breakdown that has been in the news in the last few years and you’ll see a similar pattern – customers experience a big issue – be it environmental, safety or quality issues.

Once the issues are publicly exposed – often in the media, the PR department goes full-throttle into damage control. The CEO makes a public apology and the clean-up begins, including things like a stop in manufacturing and/or a product recall.

However, the question that never gets addressed is – Why did the breakdown happen in the first place?

From many years of working with organizations, I can tell you with confidence that employees and supervisors on the shop floor always know about quality and safety problems long before top managers become aware of them.

In a company where leaders are unafraid to hear the truth, employees tend to follow suit and be courageous and vocal too. This environment is much more conducive for everyone at all levels making it their daily business to make sure things are working the way they need to. In those organizations, important information, no matter how sensitive, controversial or troubling, percolates up to the right places very fast.

However, in organizations where leaders are reluctant to hear the truth, people tend to hide and cover their behind. Finger-pointing blossoms, people do as they are told but they are unwilling to be the bearers of bad news. When you don’t have honesty, leaders remain oblivious and blind to the issues and as a result, they don’t own, confront and address them effectively.

You need courage to look in the mirror, face reality and own the uncomfortable and challenging situations. When you do it, you move from being smaller than your problems to being bigger than them. When this shift happens, you always feel more empowered and eager to take action and turn things around.

Honesty is the mandatory first step for taking the game to the next level in any area. And, as the saying goes, “The truth shall set you free.” Even if at first it will “piss you off.”

Is your team extraordinary? If not, do you know how to make it so?

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If you want to know if your team is ORDINARY or EXTRAORDINARY simply ‘put your ear to the ground’ and listen to the internal conversations that are taking place within your team.

In an ordinary team when people deal with challenges and new opportunities, the conversations are often oriented around how hard it will be, why it won’t succeed, what are the barriers and problems that will get in the way, and whose fault it is that these problems are in place.

Eavesdrop on people’s ‘around the cooler’ conversations and you will most likely hear phrases such as: “This sucks!”,”You would never believe what happened to me today…”, “They only care about themselves…” and “It’s all their fault…”

You will hear a lot of complaining, judging, invalidating, blaming and winning.

The mood and spirit that accompanies these conversations is often sarcastic, skeptical, resigned and negative.

People’s behaviors and action follow the same tune. In ordinary teams there is no sense of urgency to keep commitments, meet deadlines or get things done, people comply with the minimum standard necessary to keep their job, but they don’t go out of their way to ensure their customers are delighted.

In fact, as stated above, people often blame circumstances and other teams or leaders for why things move slow and they are unable to drive progress with greater speed and efficiency.

In ordinary teams, people tend to take other people’s efforts and contributions for granted so you won’t hear a lot of “Thank you!”, “You did a great job” and “I appreciate your contribution!”

However, in an extraordinary team, people think and talk quite differently about their circumstances, challenges and opportunities.

People don’t indulge in blame, fault or victim-type conversations. They don’t cover their behinds when things don’t work and they don’t let their ego get in their way,

In fact, if you listen in to the ‘around the cooler’ conversations in an extraordinary team you will hear conversations that are oriented around “What can we do about it?”, “How do we breakthrough?”, “What is missing or in the way?” and “How do we fix it?”.

No matter how challenging things are, people quickly take ownership of the challenges and opportunities and they only tolerate conversations that make a difference and focus on moving things forward.

In an extraordinary team, people go out of their ways to recognize and thank their colleagues. “Thank you for doing a great job“, “I appreciate your help” and “I couldn’t have done this without you” are the daily expression of gratitude and acknowledgment.

It is extremely difficult to change people if you believe they are sarcastic, cynical, circumstantial and negative in nature. However, it is much easier to change the conversations people are engaged in.

You have to start by paying greater attention to and having a greater awareness of what comes out of people’s mouths, including your own. Most people don’t have strong awareness in this area. They tend to express negative and undermining opinions and views about areas that are important to them as if these are undisputed truths. The consequence is a loss of possibilities and ability to shape or change their situation and future.

When you consider the cumulative effect of conversations in a team setting, the impact and opportunities are significant. In fact, you can use team conversations as the lever to elevate your team to extraordinary levels. And, extraordinary teams generate extraordinary results.

When an entire team is negative you can be sure to have a very toxic, suffocating and unproductive environment. However, if everyone talks in the same positive, empowering and effective way you will experience a different-level of collective power. If you keep that focus going over time, you will reach new heights of high performance.

Power requires rigor and discipline. Make sure commitments, timelines and expectations are clear and bold. And, make sure people hold each other to account for their commitments.

Don’t be fooled by appearances. People often say the right politically correct things in public and then they pay lip service to their pronouncements in their actions.

Pay attention to what people actually do after they speak and also how they speak behind the scenes. The ‘around the cooler’ chatter is often more impactful on shaping the mindset, spirit, and mood of the team.

Enroll people in speaking and acting in a way consistent with their vision and commitment. In fact, hold them to account and encourage everyone to do the same.

By changing the talk in the team from “Why we can’t…” to “How can we…” you will start changing the attitude and culture of your team toward extraordinary.

 

How’s your team health? Time for a checkup?

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The CEO, of a global service company I worked with, focused only on the bottom line of the business and didn’t put a lot of focus on the ‘softer’ side of the business, including building his own leadership team.

However, when he identified that his team was not working effectively together and he felt that this was now negatively impacting the company’s performance, he decided to invest the time to train his leaders to operate as a high-performance team.

When he started this training with his leadership team their trust was low, leaders were engaged in back-channel chatter and avoiding addressing the business issues, as well as their own inner-personal issues and conflicts, in an open, honest, authentic, courageous and effective manner.

After a couple of team-building sessions, things started to improve. The team started to communicate in a more open and candid way, and everyone acknowledged that the atmosphere was better, people were happier and things were moving better at the business.

The CEO was pleased with the progress and as a result, he stopped all future team-building meetings to make sure his leaders spent the maximum time on business-focused activities.

It didn’t take long before things started to go downhill again, and not for any ill will. Without continuing to focus on team effectiveness, the intense day-to-day grind, busyness, and stress pulled people down again. Everyone was less open, compassionate, generous and collaborative. Finger-pointing and the negative back-channel conversation sprung up again. Teams started to work more in silos with less sharing and transparency, and instead of addressing conflicts head-on the leaders would go to the CEO to complain about their colleagues. Needless to say, the dysfunctional dynamic was hurting the business again.

After a month or so the CEO couldn’t tolerate the nonsense any longer, so he gathered his team, again, for a few team building sessions. This vicious cycle went on a few times. Unfortunately, I see this happen in other companies too.

Driving the business and building the team are two distinct paths and activities with two different sets of challenges and opportunities.

You are not going to develop your team as a high-performance team by merely working on the business at hand. Every high-performance of a championship team knows that.

There are multiple articles on the internet about what you can learn from sports championship teams about being a strong team and making your business greater. I found two great ones – one about the Golden State Warriors and one about recently crowned NBA champions, the Toronto Raptors. These articles are about team leadership, attitude, communication, boldness, not the technical basketball abilities of the players.

Unfortunately, I still meet too many senior executives who don’t seem to get this. They are either old school, or they are closed-minded or they suffer from a low dose of Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

These leaders tend to only spend time on developing their team when they feel they need to fix their team because they have a problem in team effectiveness. The minute they feel they have fixed the problem or at least pulled it out of danger they go back to their old ways of ignoring the importance of team health.

So, if you want your team to be a high-performance team:

Work on building the team distinctly, in addition, and in parallel to driving the business.

Are you managing your objectives or are they managing you?

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Aspiring people have personal and professional goals as do most driven teams.

However, having goals is a double-edged sword. Goals could be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you relate to them.

Why?

We create goals in order to focus, compel and motivate ourselves and others. If we are ambitious, we typically take on bold and aggressive ones. We don’t stop there; we typically create a detailed execution plan with strategies and milestones.

Then we delve into implementing our goals and it doesn’t take long before we are so immersed in the roller coaster of our day-to-day life that we forget that we are the ones who came up with our goals in the first place.

When we achieve our goals, meet our milestones and/or achieve our plan as we wanted, we feel great. More than that, we believe we are great. Our mood and spirit are uplifted, we feel empowered and invincible.

However, when we fall short or fail to achieve our goals, milestones or plan we tend to feel disappointed, upset, anxious and/or stressed. We often second-guess our ability to achieve future goals, in the same or other areas. We get nervous about how others will view us. We often even make it mean that we will never achieve our vision or that it will never work smoothly for us.

For the most part, our relationship with falling short is not simple or objective; we don’t view it as: “we have failed to achieve a goal”. We make it mean something much bigger: “we are failures”.

Actually, in both success and failure, we tend to have a reactive and undermining relationship. Both leave us smaller than our circumstances, commitments and dreams. If we fail to achieve a goal, we feel a failure. If we achieve our goal, we feel invincible.

In both scenarios, our identity and self-worth are wrapped up in external circumstances. In either scenario, we are only as worthy as our results in relation to our objectives. And, because we created our objectives and then forgot that key fact, we are now prisoners of our own creation.

The only reason for having goals in the first place is in order to empower and inspire us to reach higher grounds. Creating goals that compel us is a powerful act. However, by forgetting, or not owning that we are the creators of such a powerful dynamic, we lose all the power.

Corporations often take the objective game to a whole other level of drama.

I was supporting a regional sales team of a global product and service organization that recently became public. The company was growing steadily due to the sales team achieving their sales objectives each quarter.

Then, toward the end of one-quarter things changed. A few big regional deals that the team was betting on to achieve its goals didn’t go through according to the plan and the region was at risk of missing its sales objective.

The global sales leader called the regional president multiple times urging, even demanding him to do whatever it took to meet his objectives.

The regional account managers started giving excessive discounts, at times giving up all profitability just to move deals forward in order to achieve their objectives.

The region ended up barely achieving their objective. However, no one felt good about it. People felt they did the wrong thing for the wrong reason; they felt the price of the apparent success was too high – giving up profitable business and ravaging the next quarter’s prospects just to cross the line with the objective at hand.

I guess it is easier to give a huge discount to a client, even at the expense of doing the wrong thing for the health of the business, than to have the tough conversation with your colleagues or boss about not allowing objectives to dictate bad behavior.

I recently spoke to the CEO of a different company who took on bold objectives and missed his first milestone. He shared with me that he felt guilty about the high bar he set, because had he not done that his people would have felt happy and successful.

I see this type of unhealthy, reactionary, survival-based behavior around objectives play out all the time in so many companies.

The lesson here is:

  1. All goals, strategies, and plans are made up.
  2. Don’t be a victim of your objectives.
  3. Own the fact that you created them for the purpose of focus and empowerment.
  4. Have the courage to manage your objectives, including saying ‘no’ to them when they are no longer the right way to go.
  5. Most important, don’t let your objectives manage you.

 

Can your team handle the tough conversations?

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You could say that any team is as strong as its ability to handle and engage in sensitive and tough conversations. The easy ones are easy.

Two types of conversation are typically sensitive and tough for people to have – giving or receiving critical or negative feedback, and any topic that requires them to put their own personal feelings, egos, pride and/or agendas aside for the greater good of their company or team.

It could be something more complex such as deciding which team to invest in, which team member to promote or re-allocating resources and budgets from one leader’s team to another.

It could be something as simple as giving honest feedback to colleagues, your boss or subordinates about poor performance, or receiving the same from them.

It is a natural human reaction to take even the most insignificant topics personally, which leads to out-of-proportion reactions and behaviors.

In high-performance teams, team members never lose sight of the bigger picture. They put their team and company first and they always strive to do the right and the best thing for the collective cause.

In high-performance teams, people don’t hold back their punches when it comes to discussing and debating the tough and sensitive topics. Teammates may fully ‘go at it’, push back and/or disagree with other team members, but they continue to listen to each other and consider each other’s views. They never cross the line of interacting in a respectful way.

In high-performance teams, at the end of the conversation, no matter how sensitive or tough, when the team or the leader makes a decision all team members put their personal preferences and agendas aside and they all genuinely align, own and support the decision, whether it is in their personal favor or not.

When they go back to their respective team members, they represent the decision as their own in a united front with their colleagues.

I have seen some great teams that exemplify this behavior. However, I have seen more teams that don’t. I think it would be safe to say that most teams don’t do a great job when it comes to having tough and sensitive conversations.

For example, the senior leadership team of a global manufacturing company was attempting to have an honest discussion about the effectiveness of their organization. The CEO, who felt proud of the high-performance culture he had built opened the meeting by asking his leaders to be open and honest about how things were progressing. He was expecting to only hear great input from his leaders.

However, while the leaders did acknowledge that the CEO had established clear processes and rigorous discipline, they also felt their CEO was not open to hearing their ideas (when they were different than his) or receiving any critical feedback about the processes he had put in place or about his tough and controlling leadership style.

The leaders took a chance based on the CEO’s urging to be open. They told him in a direct and unvarnished manner how they felt about his lack of openness to their ideas and his intimidating style.

Instead of listening, internalizing and owning the feedback… and thanking them… the CEO became very defensive and emotional. He lost his cool and started screaming at his leaders. The room went silent. People were shocked, the level of intimidation skyrocketed and everyone shut down. It was apparent to everyone that the CEO took everything his leaders conveyed personally.

Needless to say, any traces of ability this senior team had prior to this conversation to discuss and address real tough and sensitive issues were destroyed.

Let’s be honest, having the tough and sensitive conversation in a productive, constructive and respectful way takes leadership maturity and courage.

Unfortunately, too often there isn’t enough of these qualities even in the most senior teams.

 

Stop stating the obvious and start stating your stand!

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I was attending a senior Executive team meeting where the topic of the discussion was consolidating the roles and responsibilities of a few key functions in the company in order to drive greater scale, efficiency and cost reduction.

The company was commercially successful. However, it was struggling to keep its historical leading market position in the growing competitive landscape, given its high-cost structure.

There were layoffs a few months earlier and the leader’s projection showed that if they didn’t come up with more efficient and wise ways to do more with less, they would have to do it again.

Needless to say, the stakes were high as the company had to shed some overhead cost and come up with new and more modern and innovative ways of doing what they had done in the same way for many years.

Because of the strategic importance of this decision and the fact that it would affect everyone the CEO wanted his senior leaders to fully align on, and own the way forward, in order to avoid problems in the execution of this drastic change.

The discussion was challenging and awkward. Even though most leaders had clear thoughts and biases about how they wanted the new organizational structure to look, everyone was holding back and conveying their thoughts in a diplomatic and cautious way.

There was a lot of:

“Well, the problem is that each of us has strong exposure and contact with our key customers…” or,

“The problem is that we all do this today, and we all are good at this…” or,

“We need to figure out a way to take the good things from the existing structure without the bad things…”  etc.

People kept highlighting the challenges and dilemmas instead of clearly stating their thoughts about how they believed the new structure should look.

The conversations dragged on for hours. It was ineffective and, to be frank, it was painfully exhausting.

Unfortunately, I see this conversational dynamic in key business conversations and meetings all the time – people state the obvious instead of taking a stand about the way forward.

There are no right or wrong answers and solutions to any business challenges, only possibilities/opportunities, and choices. Things change so quickly these days. There are so many examples of events we were certain would happen that ended up not happening and things we never imagined or anticipated that did happen.

The role of any leadership team is to make – sometimes hard – choices and then be responsible for carrying them out. That is what taking a stand is about.

Real leadership requires courage to take a stand.

Most of the time, leaders have good ideas and thoughts about how to drive the change they want. They simply are afraid that if they clearly state their stand about critical and sensitive topics that impact other people around them their boldness may come back to bite them. The key fears seem to include:

  1. Their idea may not get selected,
  2. Their ideas may get selected and then fail,
  3. They may be viewed as ‘forceful’, ‘self-serving’, ‘political’ or having a personal agenda.
  4. They may be viewed as picking sides or favoring other leaders.

The phrase ‘Career limiting move’ comes to mind…

But, if you want things to move faster, your meetings to be briefer and more productive and your experience of day-to-day business interaction to be much more powerful and satisfying, then be more courageous, clear and assertive about the future you want and stand for.

Just don’t get too attached to your answer, especially if you are part of a team. Someone else’s ideas may be a better fit for what the team needs. Be open to that.

Promote a dialogue where people spend less time on pointing out the problems and dilemmas (which got you into this dialogue in the first place) and spend more time on discussing, taking a stand and making courageous leadership choices regarding solutions and directions that will enable you to create and fulfill your desired future.

Don’t let past failures stifle your future success

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It is a well-known fact that most change initiatives outright fail. Most initiatives start with high expectations and hope for a better future, but because of a lack of follow through and staying the course, they end up producing the opposite effect; managers and employees at all levels who are even more skeptical and cynical about any future prospect of change, including their inability to make a difference in shaping a better future.

This is the starting condition of most change initiatives. I see it in most companies.

Take for example the regional senior leadership team of a large global manufacturing company that was operating in a very competitive and commoditized market in which their fixed costs were growing faster than their top line growth.

They had to figure out how to do things differently and work smarter in order to accelerate their revenues while reducing their expenses. This meant a significant transformation in their operating model and mindset about their business.

This company was very successful, and its leadership team members were very seasoned, experienced and smart executives who had been in their jobs for many years. They knew what they had to do. In fact, they had many great ideas about how they could do things differently.

However, because they had seen so many change initiatives come and go without delivering on their promise and hope, it was extremely hard for them to get excited about the new change. They simply couldn’t help but feel extremely skeptical about the likelihood of success.

If you want your change effort to succeed, you have to first free yourself from that notion that if you have failed in the past you are doomed to fail in the future.

You can do that by understanding and taking ownership of why your past change initiatives didn’t work. In most cases, it is because leaders didn’t follow through and stay the course.

You can’t change the past, but you can learn from your past successes, failures, and mistakes. You must be clear about your future aspirations and commitment so that you can be guided by them, and not by past events.

Secondly, you need to manage the mechanical and process aspect of your change. This means, aligning on clear, bold and measurable objectives that define the end-game or what success looks like, breaking them down to mid-course (six-months or annual) milestones and then scheduling a cadence of frequent follow-up meetings to track, inspect and drive your commitment.

You must make this routine the highest priority, keep each follow-up and review meeting religiously, and not delay or cancel these meetings, no matter what.

If you Google “How long does it take to form a new habit or change a habit?” you will get a variety of answers. Most popular seems to be 21 Days.

However, when it comes to forming new practices, rituals and disciplines within a team or organization, it takes much longer.

From my experience as a practitioner – depending of course on the size and complexity of the organization – it takes around a year of staying the course and keeping to your cadence of follow up meetings to integrate your change initiative into your team’s DNA. And, this is considered to be fast.

Last, but not least, you need to drive a mindset of what I call Unconditional Ownership. This means promoting an attitude of “let’s prove that this change will work“, rather than the common default resigned attitude that exists in most teams: “let’s see if the change will work”

The mental attitude is the most important component. In the case of the leadership team described above, they were very good at the discipline of setting goals and metrics, execution and managing process. However, because they carried so much baggage of skepticism and cynicism from the past, it hindered their ability to think outside the box and believe in their power and ability to drive the change they wanted.

You always have a past and a future. The most powerful relationship you could have to them is to be your future and have your past. Or as Mahatma Gandhi put it: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

 

Are you a good communicator?

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Most people are really not great communicators. They assume that others see things the way they do, and/or they know what is expected of them, so they either avoid communicating or they communicate in an implicit and ineffective way.

Even those who do communicate often, do it in a much less direct and effective way then they think.

I was coaching two very seasoned and successful executives in the trust and communication between them. Each of them commanded a very large and critical division. Their divisions depended on each other for their success and the overall success of the company. Because these two executives didn’t trust each other they also didn’t communicate in a transparent and honest way and this affected the dynamic between their organizations.

One executive, who was harboring resentments and frustrations toward his peer, left our conversation with a passionate determination to have the brave and direct conversation with his peer. A few days later when I followed up with him, he acknowledged that the conversation took place, it was extremely forthright and bold and had a meaningful impact on his relationship with his peer.

I was pleased to hear this, but when I asked his colleague how the conversation went, he had a drastically different account of what transpired. In his experience, his colleague didn’t communicate openly at all or convey anything new or meaningful. From his standpoint, nothing had improved or changed.

I can’t tell you the number of times one person tells me how bold and direct the conversation was, and the second person says that wasn’t at all.

People don’t communicate in a clear, rigorous, direct and/or bold way and when they are called to the carpet, they often explain and excuse it with “It was a misunderstanding…”.

Well, on rare occasions there are misunderstandings. However, most of the time it is not a matter of “Oops!“.

Communication is the most powerful instrument, tool and/or weapon we have as human beings to build, drive, manage and/or destroy things. It is innate in our human operating system.

People simply don’t want to take responsibility for their potential power and impact, therefore they don’t want to take responsibility for their desires, requests (what they want), how they feel and/or what is working and not working for them.

It is easier and safer to stay small. The way you do that is by communicating in a vague, wishy-washy and cowardly way and blaming the circumstances and events for why things are not moving in the way you want.

There is both an art and a science to communicating effectively. The more you understand and practice the science the better you will get at the art.  Here is a quick overview…

There are two dimensions to communication:

The content, which is the words that come out of your mouth; making sure they are explicit, clear and direct. Making sure the receiver of your communication receives then exactly the way you meant them.

The context, which is the intention, purpose and higher messages behind your words; making sure the receiver of your communication gets where you are coming from, what you are intending and how you feel about the words you are conveying.

For example, “Tough love” – you could be upset with someone and convey harsh words without violating their genuine experience of your great love, respect, and care for them. No contradiction.

The is a construct for conducting and managing powerful communications:

If you want to be a powerful communicator all you need in your toolbox are four tools that will enable you to achieve, drive and manage any outcome you want:

  1. Request an action or outcome. If you don’t explicitly ask for what you want, don’t expect to get/have it. Nothing is too big or small to request. This is so simple and so powerful!
  2. Promise an action or outcome. If you want people to listen to you, rely on you and invest in you, make promises and deliver them. As long as you are authentic nothing is too big or small to promise.
  3. Declare your stance. If you want people to know who you are, declare your stance and where you stand in areas that are important to you. Declarations create platforms for requesting and promising.
  1. Express your feelings. If you want people to know how you feel, tell them. Don’t expect them to already know or assume they already know. There is NO Universal Code or Master Manual for how people should behave, respond or react in key situations.

Three basic tips for being an effective communicator:

  1. Over communicate. Most people under-communicate or they don’t communicate at all. Even if it feels excessive to you, most likely it will feel “perfect” for people around you.
  2. Don’t be lazy. Be explicit, rigorous and direct with your communication. Don’t assume they understand what you mean. Go the extra mile to ensure it.
  3. Take responsibility for how your communication is received. After you communicate, ask the receiver to repeat back to you what you said, what they heard, what they understood and what they are taking away from your communication. Make sure it is what you intended.

It takes courage to be a powerful communicator. It takes courage to be powerful, full stop.

First, in the sea of vagueness, a powerful communicator will always stick out like a thorn.

Second, people tend to get irritated by powerful communicators who break the mode of vagueness and bring clarity, rigor, and accountability to interactions.

So, you have an opportunity to take a stand about the type of communicator you want to be, then promise what you will start and stop doing in order to turn your stand into your natural mode.