Let Them Eat Waffles!

As we enter mid-year, we may reflect on some of the significant things we have experienced up until now and ponder what we want to try and accomplish for the rest of the year.

This same exercise happens across organizations of every size and business structure.  

As you are evaluating your year and thinking about what you want to accomplish in the next one, here are some words of encouragement I have for you… 

Let Them Eat Waffles! 

What does this really mean? Well, I was meeting with someone a few months ago. As we talked, he described his job to me in some detail. He is a plant manager for an organization that makes all kinds of electronic components. These gadgets go in hundreds of products, everything from airplanes to automobiles to grocery store freezers. His job is to oversee the plant’s manufacturing of these things and to ensure they get to the right customer.  He finished his description of his role simply with this statement, “It is pretty mundane stuff, nothing major.”

Wait! That really struck me and made me stop and ask, “What do you mean nothing major?” The way my brain works (which is quite odd at times, I will admit), I added, “Did you say grocery store freezers?”  I went on to tell him, “To me, and lots of other people too, that is a really big deal!” 

One reason that this is so big to me is that I love frozen waffles. Every time we go to our local grocery store, I take a walk down the frozen waffle aisle to see what is on sale and what items are new, then I decide what I am going to buy. It is rare that I go to the store and do NOT pick up a box of delicious frozen waffles. 

Then it hit me - this guy had lost his vision, his passion for what he does.  His lack of vision could also someday interrupt my breakfast, and I am not okay with that.

Self-Actualization

In the world of emotional intelligence, self-actualization is finding one's meaning and purpose in life. It is the willingness to persistently try to improve and engage in the pursuit of personally relevant and meaningful growth that will lead to a rich and enjoyable life. 

Someone who acts on the idea that what they are pursuing and involved in actually adds meaning and purpose is experiencing self-actualization. For some, it is that they feel they have more of a calling instead of just having a job. For others, what they do is an act of service that fulfills their destiny as human beings.  It is very much more than what they do, it is about the meaning and purpose they have in life and whom they serve. I think the reason behind the struggle some folks have is they have lost the link (or maybe it never existed) between who they are and what they do.

Let’s say, if you deliver pizza for a living, some of what you really are doing is feeding a hungry family or bringing joy to a group of people so that they can socially connect. But it is so easy to get lost in the idea that you are merely transporting a disc of dough with sauce and meat from a storefront to a house, and you have to do at least 100 of them in a night to make any decent money.

It is really easy for us to lose sight of what we do and become defined by our tasks rather than the bigger vision of who we serve. In the example above, you are not merely delivering pizza, my friend, you are feeding people and helping cement relational bonds with family and friends. 

Who You Serve 

Let’s really try to engage in what it is that you are doing with your life. Perhaps as a part of your mid-year review, you should be asking yourself who it is that you serve and how well you have done so.  Let go of defining yourself by WHAT you do and give some consideration to WHO you serve.  

The plant manager at the beginning of the blog post plays a critical role in getting component parts to people who need them. Without him and without his team, a poor schmuck like me would not have my frozen waffles in the morning for breakfast...may it never be so!

As a leader, have you lost sight of the vision and the passion for what you do? If so, the people on your team can usually sense this. You need to make sure that you show them your commitment.

Let's make sure the people on our teams and those around us have a clear vision of what they do and how it links to the people you all serve. This may help them rediscover their purpose and drive, benefitting everyone.

How Do You Solve This Leadership Problem?

Several years back, I had a fascinating conversation with a client who had an unusual problem. His organization was hiring for an upcoming position and the internal candidate was confident, driven, and articulate during the interview process. However, when he asked her to explain the different ways she’s handled “critical feedback,” she was silent. My client asked the same question in a different way and framed the query with how she normally handled “personal development opportunities.” Still no answer.

He even used an example of something he had observed in their workplace interactions and it still didn’t induce a clear answer on her part.

He was puzzled, and I could see why.

What are the best practices for a leader to implement in order to help someone see their personal weaknesses, and at the same time see their potential areas for development? 

Here are some ideas of what may be happening when your team member can’t seem to see their own development opportunities:

1. Lack of self-awareness.  They don’t know themselves enough to receive constructive feedback and how to process the information. A lack of self-awareness is actually quite common in leadership development. Self-awareness means understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the leader and the effect these have on others in different situations and contexts.

2. Poor listener.  Even though my client asked the same question in different ways, it is possible that the woman didn't understand what was being asked. In any dialogue, there are three conversations happening. The first is between the two participants, and the other two conversations are the ones that each participant is having within themselves. If their interior monologue has a “higher volume” than the verbal conversation, active listening is not happening. The conversation energy ends up being internal, going toward preparing what to say next when the other person stops talking.

3. Arrogance. It is common for leadership literature to call this arrogance. Other common descriptions are pride or being so self-absorbed that previous feedback rolled off their backs. In this particular case, it seems like the woman heard the feedback, but she rejected it.

4. Omniscience. A high level of knowledge is often seen as a positive quality in a leader, as knowledge and experience are valuable commodities. However, a leader who believes they are all-knowing can be on a slippery slope.

5. Lack of self-regard. Self-regard is the ability to be able to accept yourself for who you are. It is the appreciation for your positive attributes and your perceived negative traits, while still feeling good about yourself. With my client’s interviewee, it was possible that her personal view of self was so low or distorted, that admitting any fault would have appeared as weakness.

As leaders, it is vital we learn how to receive critical feedback.

It is also important to capitalize on any potential personal growth opportunities. So, how are you doing on answering the question, “What is your personal development opportunity”? or “How do you solve this leadership problem?”

Give these inquiries full breadth and stretch yourself a bit. Get honest with yourself and ask, "What do I need to work on that will allow me to be a more effective leader?"

5 Questions Every Leader Needs to Ask Themselves and Reflect On

How good are you at spending time in purposeful reflection?

This is a question I ask a lot of the leaders that I coach. The reason I ask about purposeful reflection is that I think leaders are fairly good at reflecting because they are constantly seeing things differently in their own heads than maybe their employees.

For example, I had a client who was working on a review of the talent in her organization. She spent a lot of time reflecting on the individuals that she was representing. However, she spent almost no time intentionally reflecting on her own overall outcome or any of the biases that she might have experienced when going through the talent review process. 

I think it is fair to say that many of us are good at reflecting on the work in front of us, but maybe not so good at critical reflection on the processes we went through to make the work happen. There are not many of us who spend time on this. And I get it. 

Those of us in leadership development have spent way too much time working with leaders on obtaining good outcomes and not nearly enough time helping other people think about their processes.  We have encouraged you to go from “good to great,” to be “innovative,” and to “work from your strengths.” But what we haven’t given you are tools to purposefully reflect on how you are showing up as a leader.

A leadership guru, Gary Yulk, wrote that “to facilitate favorable learning environments in organizations, leaders must act as a role model”.

Have you thought much about that? Do you see yourself as a role model?  What does that even mean for you and how you are impacting those on your team? Are you one who encourages your team to have a good work/life balance but sends emails at 5 pm on Saturday evenings and 9 am on Sunday mornings?  

Role models set the tone and the pace for those they work with.

Some of you might be saying, “Well I want the people on my team to work hard. I need to make sure they are always really engaged.”

Dan Goleman, in his book Primal Leadership, calls out this “pacesetting” style as dissonant. The problem, according to Goldman, is that you will likely burn out people on your team if you push them to work too hard.  If you don’t burn them out, you will run them down so much that they will lose energy to be able to give you any kind of extra effort when it is needed. 

Here are those five other bias questions that leaders can be influenced by and some additional questions that you can spend some intentional time reflecting on:

1. Confirmation Bias? Seeking out proof that will confirm what you already think or believe.  Are you working on a project or with a team and unduly influencing them to show you something that you already believe is true? What do you need to do to eliminate this bias from a project you are currently working on?

2. Hindsight Bias? The belief that the past was more accurate and predictable than it really was. How old is the data you are using to form your opinions of people on your team? I have a client who made a mistake several years ago. Although he has had many successes since then, he is still in a “penalty box” for that error. Are there people in your organization you need to forgive because you are putting too much emphasis on errors that may have happened a long time ago?

3. Gender Bias? A widely held set of implicit biases that discriminate against gender. Let's say a female in your organization gets really intense in a meeting. You think about the situation and come to a private conclusion that “when under pressure, women get emotional.” Anytime we use all-inclusive language about an individual we are showing a bias. Step back and think about what happened to her at that moment and consider maybe why she got emotional. Then apply the same standard to one of the guys on your team. If he gets emotional, does he get credit because he is passionate? How might you take gender bias out of your thinking as you work with talent on your team?

4. Anchoring Bias? Relying heavily on an initial piece of information or a data point that unduly influences your decisions and thought processes. “Do you remember that guy we hired from a competitor 5 years ago? He was a total washout.” Do you use comments like this that influence your thoughts and feelings today? Does this one situation anchor all of your thoughts on hiring competitors? How could you look at each individual without labels and find the good in what they are bringing to the table no matter what their work history might be?

5. Available Thought Bias? Your decision is influenced by what springs first into your mind. I witness this a lot in leaders. They tend to fall in love with the first thing that comes out of their mouths. This comes from pride and the feeling that we need to defend an idea just because we said it. This one happened to me one day in a meeting. I was asked my opinion and gave it, but then felt like if I didn’t defend it I would be seen as not having a take on the topic. So I ended up defending something I was not even really that passionate about.  How might you overcome pride, admit you were wrong, and agree with someone who had a better idea than you?

take some time today or this week to pause and reflect on how these biases might be affecting your leadership.

As you reflect, I encourage you to forgive yourself. We all have biases - we can’t help it. Our brains are association-making machines. They fill in blanks to make reality from things that may or may not be there. Realizing we all have biases is the first step to better team outcomes. 

The Question Behind the Question

My daughter Gretchen texted me an interesting question one day that I thought would be an interesting topic for us to reflect on together here on the blog.

Her question was: “If the average person had to choose whether to be bored or stressed, which would they pick?" What I found so intriguing about this question is that I had not thought about these two things on opposite ends of a spectrum before.

The contrast I usually think about for STRESS is RELAXATION.

An example of stress vs. relaxation, not being bored vs. stressed is that being stressed is like when I am running to catch a plane that boards in 10 minutes and I am still in the security line, versus relaxation like when I am sitting by the pool with an adult beverage, reading a book that has been on my list for months.

Similarly, the opposite of being bored, to me, is being energized. Being bored is when I have a complete lack of interest in something, like when my wife wants me to sit down and watch a reality show with her. Being energized is when something brings excitement and even joy into my life, like playing golf or watching a great baseball game on TV.

But Gretchen’s question pitted running to catch a plane that is boarding while I am not at the gate against watching reality TV. To me, they are both just different kinds of pain. I was not seeing the win in the question at all. In fact, my initial thought was that Gretchen is so smart that she was trying to bait me into one of those questions that, as a dad, I wished I had my initial answer back to her once I heard what was really behind the question.

So, in a fairly typical response style, rather than answer the question, I thought that I would ask one in return. I typed, “It depends on what you mean by stress and what the last 60 days were like.” It was the best I could do at the moment. And it came off so clinical and “coach”-sounding. Why did I answer in such an egotistical way, rather than being open and curious about my daughter’s question?

why didn’t I think about her actual question behind the question?

I think my pride got the best of me. You know, my only daughter is texting me to get some of my sage wisdom and advice on something. Even as I write this I can feel myself swell up with regret. That is when I think a lot of us get caught up in our own heads. Our own high level of self-regard comes blaring though when talking to someone when we forget to have any empathy for the person who is asking the question or the question behind the question.

I wish I had asked, “Now, that is an interesting question! Why are you asking?” A much better response. Much more open. Much more curious. Much more about HER than it was about me.

I am so fortunate to have a daughter who looks past my flaws and insufficiencies and offers me grace at the moment. Rather than beating me up about lecturing her or accusing me of always being on my “emotional intelligence work game,” she said, “Thanks, Dad! A friend and I were talking about kids who have high school jobs and if it was better for them to have a job that was kind of relaxing but boring, or to have one that was stressful but went by really fast.” As I read her response, I thought, “Man I really blew that one”. The answer I gave had nothing to do with the real question.

My Life Lesson

I decided that I have to get better at this. I need to work on shedding my pride and focusing on what the person I am engaged with is really asking me. The skill for me to practice is listening to the question and remaining open and curious about what is being asked. Most of the time, I have to admit, I have no idea what is really being asked.

I need to get better at answering the question that lies behind the question. That is where the real gold is in relationships and communication.

Things I Learned About Leadership From My Mom

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Back to the work week and our own personal development. I want to share some things I learned about leadership from my Mom this week. If you are not considering wellness in your personal development, then you are leaving out a big component of your leadership unexamined that could have an impact on your effectiveness. This week's blog really had a profound impact on me personally.

Things I learned about leadership from my mom:

Culture Matters

My Mom was all about family. We were together all of the time. Not just my parents and siblings, but my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My Mom was a “stay-at-home Mom," and I was also with my grandparents every day. The culture of the family mattered. My Mom created a family culture that oozed safety and security for us as kids.

My good friends and experts on organizational culture, Dr. Boyd Johnson and Dr. Mike Linville will undoubtedly support this notion of the importance of culture in organizations. As will my old boss and good friend Tom Considine, who famously agrees with Peter Drucker that "Culture eats strategy for lunch."

“Culture, Culture, Culture” rings through my mind with the same tone that Jan Brady had in an old Brady Bunch episode, complaining that her sister Marsha got all the attention…”Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!!!” Culture definitely needs to get MUCH more attention in organizations than it currently does.

Edgar Schein, the great organizational culture theorist says that in our Western traditions of human nature, humans are social animals with primary social needs*. When these humans come together, if they are to survive, a set of rules and regulations will need to be established to make the environment safe for everyone.

I hope you caught the nuance. The rules and regulations are about making the environment safe. This set of rules and regulations is not about making people feel valued or understood, but safe. Why? My Mom said that because when people feel safe, they are able to perform at maximum capacity. When they feel threatened, their survival mode kicks in, their thinking decreases, and their ability to hear what the leader has to say goes down.

This is why we say when leaders are trying to make a point or provide feedback, it is important to focus less on what you have to say and more on how the person is receiving it. If the person receiving the feedback feels safe, then there is a greater likelihood that your message will be heard. My Mom created an environment of safety and security (with discipline) that allowed for growth and well-being to be nurtured in our family.

Leaders Show Up

You can’t delegate presence.  As a leader, you can delegate a lot of things to other people. However, you can not delegate your physical presence when it is needed by your followers. In my family, it didn’t matter what you had going on, you showed up for weddings and funerals.  You showed up for birthday parties and baptisms. You went to church every Sunday morning. My parents never missed a sporting event, a theatrical performance, a band concert, etc.

If you want followers to follow you, then you have to show up to what is important to them. Are they making a big presentation, but you are triple-booked on your calendar? Decide to show up to their presentation! Do they have a meeting scheduled with you where they need a decision? Show up to the meeting! Is there a crisis in their life and they need you to listen? Show up and listen!

Leaders Sacrifice

I grew up in a blue-collar, working-class neighborhood in Peoria, Illinois. My parents came from working-class parents who worked on assembly lines. We did not grow up with privilege, status, or great means.  Yet I always had new shoes for basketball tryouts, killer birthday parties, and an extra $20 bill in my pocket for gas to drive back to college. My Mom never seemed to have the newest or best, but I feel I always did. My Mom showed up. This created a feeling of caring and support that allowed for risk-taking and freedom.

Followers notice the sacrifices of the leader. They notice when you stay late and help them with a project when you could be off to a social event. They notice when you answer a phone, text, or email from them. They notice when you give of yourself to them when you had other options. What do you think you might get in return for your sacrifices? I would propose that you would get these things: commitment, loyalty, and extra effort.

Interestingly, do you know what is missing in a lot of organizations today? I would suggest these things I learned about leadership from my Mom: commitment, loyalty, and extra effort. I wonder if there is a reason. One thing I would add is that my Mom never expected anything in return. If you expect loyalty, then to me that is a bit coercive. But if you willingly sacrifice as a leader, expecting nothing in return, like my Mom, then you may just get the loyalty and commitment you are looking for.

Homework: Consider the reflection questions posed in the article. After you spend some time thinking about them, see if you notice any changes that you need to make in how you are approaching your leadership.

*Schein, E. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (p. 144).

Do You Share These Observations Regarding Leadership Momentum?

I am regularly adding new coaching clients into my practice throughout the year. With that in mind, an important area to reflect on is the future of my coaching practice. “How many new clients will I engage with next year? Who will they be? What will my coaching practice look like in the coming months?” It is important to thoughtfully reflect on these questions in order to determine how I can proactively plan for a successful year for both myself and my clients.

Another area of my professional life that I reflect on is the work my clients have asked me to do with them. I begin by looking at my calendar to observe all the work I did in the past 12 months. I look at all the times I spent teaching, training, facilitating, coaching, creating content, etc. Then, I ask myself a hard question: “Is the work I am doing still relevant? Is it meaningful for those who call on me to work with leaders in their organization?”

Finally, I spend time in personal reflection and journaling. Perhaps most importantly, reflecting on how I spend my time, then I compare this data with what I really enjoy doing in my work life.

Momentum

One way to look at whether or not I am relevant is by using the idea of momentum. This is a concept that I borrow from the world of personal investing and finance.

One of the personal-finance newsletters I read on a very regular basis is called “Sound Mind Investing. (You can learn more about them at www.soundmindinvesting.com.)

In an older newsletter, Matt Bell wrote about the concept of momentum. According to Matt:

“A fundamental mistake many investors make is to move too quickly in choosing investments. They read about a hot stock or this year’s best-performing mutual fund and jump in. It’s all very ad hoc and reactive. Momentum is the idea that the recent past performance tends to persist-that is, it tends to continue, at least into the near term future.”

This means that what has happened in the recent past is likely to continue into the near future. It is what we know to be true from the world of physics; that an object in motion tends to stay in motion, while an object at rest stays at rest.

Momentum in the financial world becomes an objective measure of what is going on in the marketplace so that the investor can build a strategy based on real data and not just turn on the TV and be moved to buy random stocks.

Momentum Analysis

As I analyzed my journaling from the past years, here are 4 things I noticed:

1. Emotional Intelligence remains an important leadership construct.

   This is true for both the training work I do as well as the coaching. Most of the time when leaders hire me there is some growth desired in this area. I think Dan Goleman got it right when he wrote, “What really matters for success, character, happiness, and lifelong achievements is a definite set of emotional skills, not just purely cognitive abilities.” Organizations put so much emphasis on how smart and skillful people are that they often miss this other very important dynamic of “how” they work with others.

2. Relational empathy.

   I don’t know if this is a symptom of our political climate or not, but people have become very polar. They have an idea or a framework for how the world should be and they stick to it no matter how silly it makes them look. Maybe this is a natural outcome of divisions of labor, where those trained in finance wear finance glasses and only see the world through finance. Or, how those who are trained and educated in marketing only see the world through a marketing lens.  As leaders, we seem to have lost the skill of trying to understand where the other person is coming from, and, even more important, what it is like to be them. We are so concerned with our own selfish ambition and desires that we have lost sight of the perspective of other ways of seeing and doing.

3. Being flexible in ambiguous times.

   I was on a call with a potential client once whose organization has been turned upside down. Half of the people have either been laid off or reassigned to new roles. There is a tremendous amount of ambiguity about what certain jobs actually are and what people are supposed to do every day. I was asked to talk with the team about the impact of emotions during times of tension and what to watch for as leaders when working with others. I was interrupted with a question in the middle of my presentation when one well-meaning soul asked, “Dr. Livingston, enough already about helping people process the loss they have experienced, can you just help us get to a place where things are normal and we can all just get back to work?” My response to them was? “This is your new normal. Learning to be emotionally flexible and helping people deal with where they are in the moment IS the new calling for leaders.”

4. Connecting with talent.

   When the stock market slides, notwithstanding the economic outlook and, more specifically, the jobs outlook, is really robust. Senior leaders need to make sure they are connecting with talent because my sense is that talent is always itching for new opportunities. I think senior leaders need to get much better at proactively scheduling time to connect and care about the talent in the organization. Take them for coffee. Schedule a lunch. Learn what is on their mind. You do not need to do another ROI calculation on a process. What you really need to do is ensure you have the talent on your team to turn the future you are planning for into a reality.

Do you agree with these 4 observations? Let’s discuss these observations, or you can share your unique observations regarding your own organization.

One Way to Be More Open to Learning

It seems like people these days really have a hard time agreeing on much of anything, and most of what we argue about is misinformed. Nonetheless, we continue to drone on and on, spurred on by a few members of our tribe or a couple of dozen likes on Instagram.⁣

Can we just agree on one thing? Gene Roddenberry was a genius!
Who is Gene Roddenberry, you ask? You’re kidding me, right?⁣

As the creator of the original Star Trek, he was able to capture very distinct personality types in character development and then exploit them in a science fiction realm. One of the things I continue to be amazed by are the one-liners that came out of that show. ⁣

There are times when I will be in a conversation with someone and a Star Trek quote will just come to me!

Here are a few examples of some of those quotes:⁣⁣

- First, there is the overly emotional Dr. McCoy, “I am a doctor, not a bricklayer.”⁣
- There is the struggling fix-it engineer Mr. Scott, “You can’t mix matter and antimatter cold.”⁣
- Then, the starship captain himself, Kirk: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”⁣

But one of my all-time favorite quotes comes from Mr. Spock, who in Season 3, Episode 9 says, “In critical moments, men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.”⁣

Oh, Mr. Spock, we need you now more than ever.⁣ Critical moments need critical thinking.⁣

Spock’s quote starts with “in critical moments.” To me, that means:

• When the pressure is on. ⁣

• When the stakes are high. ⁣

• When you feel like you are in a make-or-break situation. ⁣

• When your reputation is on the line.⁣ These are the times that the logical Mr. Spock would say that as humans we cave in and create the reality we want. ⁣⁣

We tend to see what we want to see, we just hear things wrong, our memory stores the data wrong, or we put two and two together thinking it should be an equal four but it turns out that the problem is not linear. Here are some examples for you to think about that fit into this category:

Which of the following statements would you say is true?⁣⁣

• Carrots improve your vision. ⁣

• Vitamin C boosts our immunity.⁣

• Coffee stunts growth.⁣

• Sugar makes you hyper.⁣

• Your body needs a good internal cleanse every now and then.⁣

• The Great Wall of China is visible from space.⁣

• Bats are blind.⁣

The thing is, it is not just Mr. Spock who accuses us of seeing the world as we wish. Diane Halpern, former President of the American Psychological Association and Professor at Claremont McKenna College, writes in her text on critical thinking that, “the rapidly accelerating pace of change and widespread availability of a glut of information has made the ability to think critically more important than at any other time in history.” ⁣

To Dr. Halpern’s point, I did a quick internet search for each of the statements bulleted above. While none of them are actually true, all of them require some deep critical thinking to come up with a reason why they are not.

Here’s what I mean: ⁣

I did a Google search of “does Vitamin C boost your immune system?” as my keywords. The sixth citation down (after all of the internet ads), is from the Cleveland Clinic. Talk about a reputable source! The title of the article is “3 Vitamins that are best for boosting your immunity.”⁣

Now, let’s face it. Most simply take into account:⁣

• The question you typed in.⁣

• It is the first page of Google.⁣

• You see that it is from the Cleveland Clinic.⁣⁣

You may figure, why even open the article? Case closed! Vitamin C boosts the immune system. ⁣The thing is, you would be wrong. ⁣

I can hear you now. “Scott, now you are being a mean blogger who is picking on Vitamin C. My Grandmother and my Mom swore by it and they never had a cold in their life. They never let me down and I love them. Who are you to insult my Grandma?” ⁣⁣

So, don't take my word for it. Do some critical thinking and digging for yourself. ⁣

According to Dr. Jen Gunter, MD who has done a podcast called “Body Stuff”, the immune system works just as it is, and if you actually were to “boost” it, that is what becomes the problem that will often bring people to their demise. Your immune system does not need a boost! ⁣

It turns out that most of us (please consult your own physician for anything health-related you read here or anywhere else), get enough Vitamin C in our diet and do not need to supplement it at all. If your body has enough Vitamin C, then it eliminates what is not needed in your urine. So for most of us, that 500mg of Vitamin C we take at about $0.10./day ends up in the toilet. ⁣

But wait a minute... The Cleveland Clinic said…⁣

Actually, no they didn’t. If you open the article they say you don’t need it unless your doctor advises it. But the marketing people who run the Cleveland Clinic’s blog posts know that if they put a number in the title you are more likely to open it. So, turns out, the article is true, but the title is a little misleading.⁣

I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes at me because I am making an argument against a longtime belief. You probably don’t care as much about bats not being blind (they are not blind, they just rely 3x more on their hearing) but when I put “detoxing your inners” on the list, well them’s fighting words.⁣

This is part of the problem.

Some of us have made very public claims about some of these things. You might even have an anecdotal story of knowing a person who takes Vitamin C and never gets sick. And you have told this story over and over again, so not only do you believe that it is true but you have claimed it publicly so your reputation is also on the line. This isolated example of the person you know does not support a direct correlation between Vitamin C consumption and immune system boosting. While both of the observations may be true, the conclusion is false. ⁣

Critical thinking is a skill. And for most of us, on most topics, we should likely say less and study a lot more. Rather than coming to a rapid conclusion, let’s get better at saying,

“I don’t know, but I am open to learning more.”

2 Helpful Tools for Improving Team Health

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to facilitate a discussion for a team on how they could become healthier.

The team by all accounts was high performing - made up of “top guns” from the industry. A group whose contact list goes three and four layers deep into important and influential customers. They have done a remarkable job as a team, pulling their share of the weight for what needed to be done in the organization. Hitting all their yearly goals by the third quarter.

The premise for team health is that there is a synergy that happens where the team can do amazing things that no single member could ever achieve on their own. That when there is team health there is a feeling of invincibility and performance can increase.

On the flip side, when teams are not healthy, like when certain aspects of performance become overemphasized, other parts of the systems that make us human can become damaged. And while it may look like we are performing, the results are short-term. Worse, the synergy that is anticipated never happens.

I was having a conversation with a physician friend once about this idea of extremes in performance when it comes to human health. This physician is actively involved with athletes in a consulting capacity and recalled a meeting he was in preparing a local community for a marathon race. The race is fairly well known so, as you can imagine, the health of the runners is really important.

The people in charge of the race convened a committee of 20 physician marathon runners and my friend chaired the committee. The interesting thing about the group of physician-runners was that all of them were under the age of 55 and of the 20, about 40% (8) of them had heart stents. High performers in any discipline have to think deeply about all of the systems that go into their performance. Failing to do this will put undue stress on one aspect of the system, ultimately causing a breakdown in the ability to perform.

My Story

The objective given to me by the organization that hired me was clear: The folks on this team needed a perspective that they are leaders in the organization. To achieve this, they needed to learn to better understand themselves and lead themselves as leaders.

Those of you who love to study how organizations learn will recognize the task as one that involves double-loop learning. The group I was working with needed to examine some of the basic assumptions they had about themselves and then how the organization defined performance. Double-loop learning encourages teams to ask clarifying questions about how they identified the problem, what processes they used to understand the problem, what they can learn from the problem, and how they can apply that learning in the future.

To get this team to see their performance in a new way, they needed to think differently about what this term means and then develop some new ways of going about their work.

2 Ways To Encourage Learning

Two ways that leaders can foster learning on teams are by providing opportunities for exploration and advancement.

Exploration stimulates innovation, new ways of thinking, and creative processes to develop new products or incorporate new technology. One of the exercises I took this team through was how to be a better listener. I gave them some guidelines on how to listen better and focus on the needs of the other person. Then they were given a listening partner and a set amount of time in which they were to do nothing but listen to the other person. We did three rounds of these questions and each time the questions got more difficult to just sit and listen.

The idea here was to give the team a new way of thinking about listening. As a leader, it is good to have a perspective or opinion but the broader organizational teams also have opinions and ideas. The takeaway for this group is that if they listened with more intensity, then they would understand the perspective of others and be able to create the organizational synergy that senior management was expecting.

Advancement is when teams look for ways to improve existing processes or products while incorporating innovation and creativity. Leaders encourage team learning through experimentation, providing resources, implementing reflective practices, and celebrating victories during the learning process. One of the unhealthy behaviors that had surfaced on this team is that when something did not go their way, rather than engaging in healthy conflict, they internalized the issues and they became more awful. So, if one of their members was inadvertently left off of a meeting invite list, rather than be more assertive and reach out to the meeting organizer, the team would say, “it is not our place to get invited, if they don’t value our input then that is their fault.” As a team, we worked on understanding our individual conflict styles and then improving processes where they needed to be flexible from their default conflict style.

As a leader, it is your responsibility to care for the health of your team. It is my hope you will continually be looking for ways to use exploration and advancement to improve the health of your team.

5 Reflections to Consider as You Review Last Year’s Goals

Like many of you, last year I set some goals for my business, my career, and my personal life. Since we are almost halfway through January of 2023, I pulled out those goals to review them and assess my progress. I thought I might share with you what I have learned from that reflection time.

The Main Goal

One of the goals that I set in my personal life in the past was that for golf, I wanted to be able to consistently shoot in the mid 80’s by a certain time.

A goal is best when it is specific, measurable, achievable, and time-bound.

Currently, I am frustrated by how realistic that goal might actually be! When I set the goal, it was totally within my grasp. But, right now, I am not so sure.

I played a round recently and I scored a 95. However, I was shooting consistently between 89 and 91 previously. That is a 6 shot difference...in the wrong direction! As I was reflecting on this goal I had set, I not only became frustrated but I was disappointed as well.

Who wants to set a goal, get intentional with it, invest time in developing it, then feel like you are going backward?

You might be feeling this way about some of the goals you set as well. Maybe you haven’t made much progress, or like me in my golf game, you have gone backward a bit in your development.

Please do not get discouraged!

Oftentimes, we know we are growing because things get worse before they get better. If you hang in there and keep practicing, your goals can be within your reach. I have confidence that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve what it is you desire.

Here are 5 things I learned as I reflected on NOT MEETING my goal...

My Development Reflection

1. Changed My Tools.
   As I began my quest to become a better golfer, people kept telling me, “Scott, you need new equipment.” Mind you, the clubs I had were good enough. I had become comfortable with them and they were serving me well. But person after person, who I really respect when it comes to the game of golf, told me that my game would really improve if I upgraded my clubs. So I did it.
   
   Reflection Lesson: What I have learned is that development takes time, yet time does not stand still for development. Yes, I needed to retool, but that took months to happen! Month by month, my game did not improve because I did not plan far enough in advance.
   
   How about you? Have you ever set a goal for yourself, then time goes by and the expectation you have for yourself doesn’t have enough grace in it to allow for this time lag? If I had the new clubs earlier, where would I be now? Who knows? But the good news is that I have time, so maybe a little bit of grace toward myself might be a good thing.
   

2. Received Some Coaching.
   I am not sure how improvement happens without a coach. Now, coaching is not something you have to necessarily pay for, but I know in my golf game, I need new ideas, new things to practice, and accountability.
   
   Reflection Lesson: Coaching is mandatory for growth.
   
   How about you? When was the last time you were open to some feedback and trying new things in how you approach your development? The best thing my coach has done for me is kept me from going back to the things I should not have been doing.
   

3. Did Not Practice Regularly Enough.
   Some months are very busy month for me. I can have a very large new project at work added to an already full schedule. No excuses, I simply did not prioritize golf. Again, I think I need to give myself some grace. I am not naturally a good golfer, so I need practice time. I know if I do not practice, I will not improve. Period.
   
   How about you? Do you ever get so busy that you just don’t have time to prioritize your own development? It happens to all of us, but if we are not going to prioritize practice, what does that say about the expectations we have for ourselves? If something does not come naturally to you, practice is essential for development to occur.
   

4. Practicing Extremes.
   One thing I have noticed is that there is a big difference between my practice time and my game time. I had begun to take my practice sessions and extend them into my game time. Big mistake! Practice should be just that, a time to try new things. I was practicing extremely hard during my practice time. But, when I took it to my game time, it didn’t show the same results.
   
   How about you? Have you ever taken practice into the game and it didn’t go well, so you gave up? Instead of giving up, why not just back off the extreme of practice a bit? No need to go full force all the time. Practice hard, then find your game rhythm.
   

5. Failure As Learning.
   I think one of the things I was reminded of most during my reflection is that I am not failing at my goal. Sure, I have not yet hit my target. In fact. But, I have learned a lot along the way. I now have the right tools and the right coaching, and I’m practicing on a regular basis with the right mindset when it comes to learning and performance. I feel like I am ready for a breakthrough.
   
   How about you? How do you look at goals when you are not meeting them? How do you respond? Optimism is the skill of responding to setbacks and is a valuable commodity when things are not going your way.

The year is just beginning. Pull out your development goals! Review them honestly. Then, get moving toward the leader you want to be. It is never too late to give yourself some grace and begin your progress.

See you at the TOP!

How would you respond to this question?

“How can I help my boss get better as a leader?”

This straightforward question was asked by a direct report of my clients as we were wrapping up our Leadership 360 interview (a series of open-ended leadership questions that help my clients get a clear picture of how their leadership looks to those around them). 

A First For Me

I have been doing these structured Leadership 360 interviews for almost 20 years and have facilitated hundreds, if not thousands, of these 1-on-1 interviews. Not one person has ever asked me that question.  

I found it really interesting that this one dear person cared enough about her supervisor that she would want to know how she could be involved in her boss's development.

My Response

All of my coaching sessions are confidential, including the 360 report and development planning.  I wanted to answer her question, but I needed to be tactful as to not disclose what my client would be working on.

“How do I respond in a way that is helpful for her, without breaking any confidentiality I must maintain with my client? “ I quickly thought to myself.

Here's how I responded...

“I think the best way you can help your boss is by helping him be more self-aware. Now, this is going to require a level of trust on your part, and there could be some risk, so you need to ask yourself if you are willing to take the risk. If you are, then your boss has probably already in some way declared strengths, and things he would like to do better.”

She agreed, so I continued...

“Then help him see when he is doing it. Let's imagine he has told you he is a micromanager and wants to change. Perhaps in the midst of a project, at the appropriate time, you then say to him, 'You know, Jim, it feels to me right now like you are micromanaging me. Is that something you are intending to do?'”

She sat in silence on the phone for a seemingly endless pause.

“I can do that." She finally broke the silence. “Good,” I affirmed her. “Don’t feel like you have to change him, don’t feel like you have to coach him. Just help him see the times where he is doing something he wants to change.”

Helping leaders SEE the change they want to make is perhaps the biggest gift you can give to them.

What About You?

So many of us get caught up in our own development, but I’d like to encourage you to begin looking for ways you could support someone else with their development. Perhaps it’s shifting your focus from helping them solve the problem, to inspiring their awareness of the opportunity right in front of them.

If you feel encouraged and motivated by this post, try asking your leader how you support them in their development. Their response may surprise you and revitalize you in your own self-development journey.

Think differently as you set 2023 goals

I’d like to share a story about an inexperienced leader named Charlie. He shows up to work early and stays late. He’s motivated to move from an individual contributor into his first front-line leader role, but he’s not sure how to make that happen. He’s getting grief from his wife for working weekends, and his heavy workload doesn’t ever seem to ease up. How can he move into a leadership role if he’s buried in his current role?

Charlie’s organization is offering a course on Leading with Emotional Intelligence and his boss is encouraging him to attend the class. Charlie feels conflicted. According to research, if Charlie puts this training in the form of a goal that has a useful future orientation, he is more likely to get the results he is looking for, rather than to put the goal in some prevention connotation.

Research published in the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies (Sadler, T., Gibson, S., Reysen, S. (2017), reports the effect of a leadership training program on consideration of future consequences. (Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 10(4), 35-42.)

To operationalize this a bit, let’s say that you have a team of leaders who are all functional experts; Human Resources, Engineering, Information Technology, Sales, Manufacturing, Marketing, Finance and so on. This team, in the past, while getting along personally, has conformed to operating in silos. Each person does a great job of representing their own function to the face of the organization, but as a team, they struggled to get the synergy that would propel them to the next level.

The sales leader was always trying to maximize sales and didn’t understand why Marketing couldn’t supply the customer segmentation data fast enough. And why did it take Engineering so long to get the prototype built and delivered to the client?  Engineering, on the other hand, was frustrated with Supply Chain who just couldn’t get realistic estimates on how much materials were actually going to cost.

The president of the organization, realizing the leaders were all doing a great job of representing their individual role, needed to function better as a team. She was encouraged by a colleague to explore the idea of a training program that would focus on team building.  

But would it be successful? Would the organization get synergy from the team development so that the return on the investment would be positive for shareholders?   

A good question. A fair question.

Turns out the data is a little mixed on what should be expected.

A Little Background

It is no secret that organizations spend billions of dollars every year on training people in their organizations. Everything from skill-based training, like how to weld two pieces of metal together, or how to write computer code. From more leadership-oriented topics like Leading with Emotional Intelligence or Writing Your Own Leadership Story, to team building events.

Whether the training is skill-based or cultivating leadership in our organizations, the question always surfaces as to what is the return on investment.  There is research that can help us determine if leadership type training is effective in helping leaders meet their goals. But it depends…

Goal Type

It turns out that when it comes to goals, leaders pursue attainment using one of two strategies:

1. Promotion: concentrating the efforts of achievement on positive proactive and productive results.

2. Prevention: targeting efforts on avoiding negative outcomes.

Let’s revisit our friend, Charlie. If his orientation is more to prevent something bad from happening or toward thwarting a negative future response, then his success in the training and as a future leader is in question.

How can Charlie (or his boss) orientate the training as to get a more successful outcome for him as a leader? If Charlie says to himself, “I want to take this leadership training because it will help me be a better coach and mentor to others in the organization someday,” then the aspect to his goal attainment has shifted.

Charlie is moving from individual contributor to organizational leader, and that is what is going to help him get what he wants.

How are you orienting the goals of folks in your organization?  Are you creating a positive, futuristic orientation of hope for the future, or are you trying to prevent failure?

The orientation of our thinking matters!

Are You Listening to This Voice in Your Leadership?

Every leader needs a voice that will speak truth to others and help them see things that are not obvious. Henry Kissinger is famous for saying that one of the most difficult things for a young leader to do is to “speak truth to power;' to go up the power gradient with information that is contrary to what the hierarchical, authoritative, and referent, position believes to be true. We have all been there at points and felt the emotion of that moment. There is inherent organizational danger in communicating things to a leader that they are not seeing at the moment:

• You could be rejected, which leads to embarrassment

• You could be dismissed, which leads to self-doubt

• You could be humiliated, which leads to isolation

• You could be discounted, which leads to demoralization

The young leader has information that someone in a decision-making position needs to hear, and is frozen at the moment by these potentially negative outcomes.

The other side of the proposition is, all things being equal, there is a huge upside in communicating to a leader what they are not seeing at the moment:

• You could be celebrated for the input

• You could be included in the decision-making process

• You could be honored for your courage

• You could be valued for your contribution

Whether it is a part of reality or a figment of our imagination as leaders, “speaking truth to power” can seem overwhelming. This is the risk tension that young leaders face. Some of the mediators that go into the “speak truth to power" equation are:

• The culture of the organization-What is the level of freedom that truly exists for information sharing?

• Young leaders' personal-risk tolerance-Where do they fall on a spectrum between “wary” and “adventurous”?

• Receptivity of the leader to feedback-What is the historical behavior elicited when contrary opinions have been shared?

Receptivity of the Leader

I think we can all agree that the young leader when faced with a decision to speak truth to power, has a burden that can feel like wearing a shirt made of lead.

However, as more senior leaders in organizations, how much of the burden falls on us to create an atmosphere where much of the risk is mediated for a young leader? How much of the responsibility is ours to create an environment in which others feel the freedom to be able to share?

I argue that much of the speaking-truth-to-power-dichotomy rests not in the hands of the deliverer but the receiver. And yet the senior leader is the one who oftentimes has the most to lose by missing key information that was never brought to them. In the fast-paced, get-it-done-now, microwave culture that organizations exist in today, many of us cave into our survival reptilian brain that tells us to do whatever we can to survive.

Many times these environmental and personal factors are not acting in our favor. As leaders, we have to put effort into creating a persona and a culture so that the voice we need to be able to hear in our organization comes through.

5 Actions you can work on today

Here are my top 5 tips for leaders who want to improve their chances of gathering all of the information they need to hear to be able to make an informed decision:

• Slow down your cadence-Most of the leadership mistakes I have made were because my world was moving too fast and I did not slow down to see more possibilities. The faster I went, the more convinced I became that I was right, and the further away I got from the truth. Take a deep breath, count to 10, silently sing a familiar tune very slowly (I like; “Row, row, row, your boat”), pray, and do whatever you need to do to slow your reality down.

• Become curious-The practice is to suspend your need to be right or heard and to work really hard to understand the other person's position. Before you jump to conclusions or shoot them down because of what you know that they don’t, spend some time to really discern the message they are bringing to you.

• Always say thank you-You would be surprised at how often I observe leaders in interactions where they turn and walk away without expressing gratitude. I don’t think it is an intent to be mean or degrading, the pressure of the moment takes the brain to the next thing rather than finishing the relationship with the current interaction. Researchers at USC found that simple acts of gratitude provide benefits ranging from feelings of reward and satisfaction to just helping people to hold on to their humanity.

• Spend time reflecting- At the end of your day, take the time to review the day. Review interactions you had with others. Resist the temptation to become defensive and ask yourself questions like: “I wonder what they were really trying to ask me? Why did I feel such a strong need to defend myself? Why did I feel such a strong need to exert power at the moment? What unintended consequences could the action I took cause?

• Do the inner work of developing your soul- The psychology data says you are as intelligent right now as you will ever be. Your personality is fully formed, so you know if you are extroverted or introverted. You have most of the skills you will ever need. So what is your next step in development? Do you need to work on developing the soul of your leadership?

Homework:

Pick one of the 5 Actions above and work on it every day for a week. For example, in every personal interaction and in every email you send, say “thank you." Work on making your attitude heartfelt. If you try any of these let me know how they go for you.

Empowering Leadership Growth: Supporting Your Boss's Development

In a Leadership 360 interview I did last year, a direct report posed a question that had never been asked in nearly two decades of my coaching career: "How can I help my boss become a better leader?" This unexpected inquiry underscored a profound desire to actively contribute to their supervisor's growth and development.

Confidentiality in my coaching sessions is paramount, yet I sought a way to honor the question without compromising my client's privacy. My response pivoted towards fostering self-awareness, a foundational aspect of leadership growth.

My Response

"I believe the most impactful support you can offer your boss is through fostering their self-awareness," I advised. "If your boss has already highlighted their strengths and areas for improvement, consider gently pointing out moments when those aspects manifest."

Encouraging her to navigate this delicate path of offering feedback, I elaborated with an example: "If your boss has expressed a desire to reduce micromanagement, gently address the behavior at that moment. Help them recognize, without coaching or changing them, when they exhibit such tendencies."

The power of guiding leaders to perceive the change they aspire to make is an invaluable gift.

This experience prompted a broader reflection on our roles in personal development. Instead of solely focusing on our growth, why not explore ways to support others in their journey? Shifting the focus from problem-solving to inspiring awareness of opportunities can spark transformative change.

What About You?

I urge you to consider initiating conversations with your leader about supporting their development. Their response might illuminate new avenues for personal growth and invigorate your self-development journey too.

By actively engaging in the growth of those around us, we not only contribute to their success but also find newfound inspiration for our personal development.

How can you help your boss grow as a leader today?

A Simple Hack for Work Relationship Difficulties

I know it is going to be an interesting conversation with a coaching client when the conversation opens with “I’m struggling with a person on my team. We do not have a very good relationship. Do you have any advice for me?”

For me, being a coach is about the person I am working with, figuring out what is going on inside of them so that they can get the responses or actions they want. My desire is to function more like an investigator rather than an oracle. Rather than providing advice, I find myself asking them a lot more questions.

When a client talks to me about their relational struggles, many questions come to my mind. I really have to think about what direction I want the conversation to go. Here are some questions I get curious about:

• Why is there a struggle?

• What is it about this person that makes things difficult?

• Do you feel this way about others on the team?

• What does a good relationship look like to you?

• Do you have good relationships with other team members?

• Are there any other contexts that are affecting the relationship as opposed to it being just about this person?

No matter which of these questions I ultimately ask, the answer is usually one that is a surprise to me. So, if I ask, “Why the struggle?” I would get back something like “The person reminds me of someone from my past who treated me horribly.” Or, “They are a micromanager, so the further I stay away from them the better.”

This is where as a coach, I have to practice what Edgar Schein calls “Humble Inquiry;” asking a question that you don’t know the answer to with an attitude of interest in the other person.

Schein says that as leaders in the conversation it is up to the leader to humble themselves. This means that I, as the leader have to put my needs and desires aside and really focus on the person in front of me and what they need at the time. This can be really hard.

It would be easier, rather than asking a follow-up question, to relate an experience that I have had in the past and to rush in and solve the problem for the other person. For example, I could share how I once had a boss who was a micromanager as well, and what I did was learn to anticipate what they needed so that when they dug in they could see it was already done. This is exactly what my coaching client does not need from me though.

I have to humble myself to realize that it is not about me. It is about the person I am coaching. Once I do this, I am ready to discover more about what the issue really is. I am ready to get curious and inquire.

Humble Inquiry Questions

These types of questions are not difficult. They are short and very open-ended. They spark immense curiosity in the conversation. Here are 4 of my favorites:

• Can you say more about that?

• Can you tell me a little bit more?

• Can you elaborate even further?

• What was that like for you?

The goal of the Humble Inquiry line of questions is to get the client to unpack more of what is on their mind. I am always amazed at how being curious about meaning takes the conversations to places I did not expect them to go. It is a bit like going to Disney World; I know it is going to be fun, but I just don’t know what I am going to discover when I get there.

My Number One Hack for Improving Relationships

Take them to lunch!

That is it. It really is that simple. Invite the person you are struggling to develop a relationship with to lunch. Your only objective is to get to know them better.

Although most studies indicate that sharing a meal contributes to communication and relationship development, many theories and research indicate that it is the specific practices at mealtime rather than the food itself or the ties that create the real value (Larson, Branscomb, & Wiley, 2006).

In one case study by Watland, Hallenbeck, & Kresse, (2008) police officers enrolled in an MBA program shared a meal together once a week. More than 69% of the participants indicated that their interactions with each other had positively affected the work of their department. The initial interactions among participants were built on getting to know each other better. This soon translated to a deeper knowledge and level of trust and the group began relying on each other to solve problems in the work setting.

Most sociologists tell us that it is not the food, but the dedicated mealtime, that is the developer of social bonds. I would propose that while eating, you can not talk as much and you are forced to listen more. If you really are enjoying your pizza so much that you would rather just ask a short question instead of getting back to the sausage and pepperoni, then maybe, just maybe, you will be nourished not only physically but spiritually as well.

So, if you are struggling with a relationship, invite them to lunch! What harm can it do?

While it may not solve all the problems, I think you will find if you practice Humble Inquiry, it is a step in the right direction.

Bon Appetit!

How Does Risk Affect Your Team’s Performance?

Do you think risk and reward go together? Or is the reward an outcome of risk? Let's say someone on your team is driven by risk and we suppose they are carefree. Someone else on the team is risk-averse and we categorize them as wary. Now the team has to make a decision about a product or how to put a presentation together. In either scenario, the carefree person wants to go for it. The wary person wants to hold back on the decision. Depending on team dynamics, the team may find themselves out of balance or even stuck. As a result, emotions rise, and people my stop understanding each other.

The stuck feeling the team is experiencing has nothing to do with talent or skill. The team is not performing well at the moment because they all have different tolerance for risk. Risk brings with it, as change does, a certain emotional tone and tenor. We each have a tolerance for risk. As that tolerance becomes challenged, our emotions, anxiety, and fear can all increase. Then we feel the less risky something is to us.

There are 8 different types of risk profiles. As a leader, understanding these risk types will help you navigate team dynamics and maximize the risk profiles of each member on your team.

8 Risk Types

1 - Excitable

At the root of this is impulsivity and an attraction to risk, combined with distress and regret if things go wrong. This risk type tends to be passionate and fluctuates between excited enthusiasm and pessimistic negativity. Such people are both frightened and excited by their impulsiveness. They are likely to respond emotionally to events and react strongly to disappointment or unexpected moments.

2- Intense

Those who fall into this dimension tend to be anxious and worrisome. People in this risk type expect the worst, they are high-strung and alert to any risk or threat to their well-being. They are emotionally invested in their decisions and commitments and take it personally when things don’t work out. They tend to be very passionate about things, but their mood can swing drastically from day to day.

3- Wary

Characterized by a combination of self-discipline and concern about risk, these are cautious, organized people who highly prioritize security. They are likely to be alert to the risk aspect of any investment opportunity before pressing into any potential benefits. These people have a strong desire to know exactly what to expect, and, as a result, may find it difficult to make decisions.

4 - Prudent

Those in the prudent risk type have a high level of self-control. This type is organized, systematic, and conforming. Conservative and conventional in their approach, such people prefer continuity to variety and are most comfortable operating within established and familiar procedures. They are generally very cautious and suspicious of any new ventures and may find reassurance in sticking with what they know.

5 - Deliberate

These individuals have high levels of calm self-confidence combined with caution. This type tends to be unusually low-key, even in situations where most people would panic. At times, they seem almost too accepting of risk and uncertainty. However, they are often well balanced by a desire to do things in a planned and systematic way. Because they are highly organized, compliant, and like to be fully informed about what is going on, they are unlikely to walk into anything unprepared.

6- Composed

This type is cool-headed, calm, and unemotional, but at the extreme, they may seem almost oblivious to risk. Their outlook will always be optimistic. These people take everything in stride and appear to manage stress very well. They are not particularly impulsive but are also not overly organized or systematic.

7 - Adventurous

At the root of this type is a combination of impulsiveness and fearlessness. Extreme examples of this type are people who have a disregard for custom, tradition, or convention. They are seemingly oblivious to risk. Their decision-making is likely to be influenced by both their lack of anxiety and their impulsiveness.

8 - Carefree

Those in this category dislike repetitive routines and do not like being told what to do. Such people may seem excitement-seeking and, in extreme cases, reckless. Lack of attention to detail and preparation may cause their intentions and objectives to seem vague. Their impatience, impulsivity, and distractibility sometimes leave them exposed to hasty decisions.

These risk types all come from an assessment that is published by Multi-Health Systems called the “Compass Risk Type Indicator”. The tool is designed to assess the individual risk type of each person on a team and then give the team a picture as a whole. As we design workshops around this Compass Risk Type Indicator it is always interesting for a team to look at a current issue they face, study each other’s Risk Type, and work through possible solutions.

There is potential for risk in almost everything we do, and there are many different factors that influence a person’s readiness to take a risk at any particular moment. As leaders, we must be aware of the way those on our team interpret and respond to risk, beginning with ourselves.

The next time your team is stuck in making a decision, look at the list of risk types and ask if the source of the stall could be attributed to a different approach to risk.

Patience: A Strategy for Getting Unstuck

Years ago, I worked with a business leader who had an incredible vision for his organization. He was a passionate leader with excellent communication skills and so much energy for his mission. He was intellectually and morally solid and cared deeply for the people in his organization.

But he was stuck.

His organization just couldn’t grow the business past a certain industry-standard metric. However, the stagnation issue became evident as we looked over some feedback provided by his peers. One of the interview questions I ask the peers of my clients (as a routine part of my data gathering) was, "What is the vision this leader has for the organization?" After several interviews, the collective response was, “The vision is very clear, but we have no idea what steps we need to take to get started. It is like he has been dreaming of this his entire life and we are just catching it for the first time."

As I presented this feedback to the leader and we processed the data together, his knee-jerk reaction was: “We don’t have time to wait for them to process this. The time is now! They need to get on board or get out of the way. We are going to miss our opportunity. The timing is just right!"

So I asked him, “Is it their lack of urgency, or could it be something else?”

After processing with him for a while, we discovered there was not a lack of urgency on the part of the organization. There was, however, a lack of emotional connection between the leader and his team. The urgency that the leader was feeling for vision implementation and change was being offset by his lack of emotional connection competency of patience. People in organizations need time to absorb, process, and own the vision themselves. They need patience.

Patience is devoting the appropriate time and attention to others in ways that enhance meaningful interaction.

Patience is suspending your personal need for satisfaction and action.

Patience seeks to slow down those fast-paced exchanges with others in order to facilitate better decision-making.

Patience is not racing ahead in the thought process while missing information that others are endeavoring to share.

Patience is not wasting the opportunities to encourage, inspire, and motivate others.

In leadership development, it is always important to keep your perspective on a leader who is not connecting emotionally with his team. Without this emotional connection, it is virtually impossible to have the social intelligence needed to achieve organizational effectiveness.

There are a number of reasons a follower may choose to align with a leader. Fully committing to the vision of the leader is a quintessential desire that followers have. What they receive in return for committing to the vision of the leader is an emotional connection with that leader.

In our case study above, the leader has a choice. He can either move forward with his urgency and risk losing his entire vision. Or he can proactively slow down and take the time to encourage, inspire, and motivate his people. By embracing patience and connecting emotionally with his team, he can catapult the vision to the next level with everyone on board.

How are you connecting emotionally with your team? I’d love to hear your comments.

How to Navigate Change Without Frustration

People have been suffering terribly in the midst of Hurricane Ian. FEMA reports that federal responders are working alongside nearly 5,000 Florida National Guard members so far and now other state response and emergency managers. Recovery will be very hard, and early estimates said insured losses could reach over $40 billion.

As we keep these many people very close in our thoughts and prayers this week, I thought we could just reflect on ourselves and the people we both lead and interact with by talking about change styles.

“Scott, What on Earth Is a ‘Change Style?’”

I'm so glad you asked. Your change style is the type of approach you naturally bend toward when leading others in the midst of great change. These are the three change styles based upon the “Change Style Assessment” that I often use with my clients. 

Pragmatists: These people approach change by exploring existing structures within a situation, and operate as mediators and catalysts for change within that structure. They prefer change that best serves the function. They can often appear reasonable, practical, and flexible but also noncommittal. We all pray that those cities and people affected by the hurricane will eventually "rise again," to become what they were before this storm, similar systems have worked before, and I know the people cannot wait for it to be over for them to use them.

Conservers: These people accept existing structures around them, but unlike pragmatists, prefer to keep existing systems and structures in place. They would rather see gradual changes happen. While they might seem cautious and inflexible at times, they are not afraid to ask hard questions. This might be someone such as President Calvin Coolidge. He is an often overlooked president because he was seen as too cautious and inflexible to enact any real change. However, his slow-moving approach allowed him to see the big picture when it came to things like the economy, and he became the only president to leave the office with no national deficit. 

Originators: These people are original thinkers who will challenge existing structures from the very beginning. They actually enjoy risk and uncertainty, quick and radical change. Sometimes they can come off as unorganized and undisciplined. An example of an originator would be Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who challenged the broken social structure and took risky steps that led to radical, beautiful change. 

What Is the Value of Knowing Your Change Style?

Who among us is not in the middle of some kind of change? Change is all around us. Here are some things that I have noticed over the months and years just in my little corner of the world:

• Once, my grocery store changed where my favorite frozen yogurt treat was found in the freezer case. It seemed like every time I went into the grocery, something had moved.

• My favorite brand of frozen protein waffles changed their packaging once and I almost couldn’t find them on the shelf.

• My workout routine changes every year, based on what is going on in my life.

• I have implemented the Emotional Intelligence EQ-I certification to certify leaders and coaches to use these practices in their organizations.

Since things in both our personal and professional lives are constantly changing, I think it is good for us to understand how we approach change. I tend to be more of an originator and get a lot of satisfaction out of rearranging things to see if I can make them better. However, I also know that if I am not aware of a change, I can easily get frustrated, like the example of when I couldn’t find my frozen waffles because the package was different.

Knowing about yourself or your clients and how they approach change can be very valuable. Think about a conserver style leader who is asked to lead a new systems initiative in their organization. If the leader is aware of their change style, then they can better manage the processes. Left unaware, frustration and doubt can hold the best leaders frozen in their tracks.

What Is Your Change Style?

Take this quiz below to get an idea of which change style might be yours. And if you are coaching someone through change, we have also provided an assessment tool available for you to use to find out if their change style will to allow you to help them grow in their approach to change. 

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How Not to RIDE the Negative Train

Duke Ellington once said, “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” I just love this perspective. I wonder how many of us really see it this way?  I wonder how many of us as leaders, when people on our teams bring us situations that feel like a problem, see it as an opportunity to do our best?

Reflect with me for a moment. Stop, take a sip of your coffee, and think back over your last week. What is a situation or a problem that someone on your team brought you? Do you feel as a leader that your perspective was a chance for you to do your best? Do you feel you took the opportunity to help the person bringing you the problem to do their best?

Perspective

One of the more interesting things about being an executive coach is that I get an opportunity to have a lot of interactions with a lot of different leaders. I have been known to log over 42 hours of Zoom meetings sometimes in a couple of weeks! For me, and I am sure you as well, this has been a pretty typical pace since the pandemic started. 

For the past couple of years, I have been paying closer attention to not only what people are showing up with, but how they show up. In leadership coaching, I get the chance to help folks look at their leadership and ensure how they show up is how they intend to keep showing up.

Most of us want to make sure our intentions match our impact. It is my experience, however, that not many of us stop and think proactively about what we want our impact to be. Especially when there is a problem and that problem has an emotion attached to it.

Go back to the reflection you did at the beginning of this post. As a leader, when the person on your team brought you the problem, did how you want to show up match how you did show up? Or, were you so caught up in the emotion of the problem that you had a hard time even knowing what problem it was you were trying to solve? I see this a lot! I will often ask folks I am working with...”Now, what problem is it we are solving exactly? Let's keep the main thing.”

Example

Some of you know that I am an avid golfer. Not a good golfer, but I really enjoy the challenge the game brings to me. So many little things have to be done right to hit a good golf shot, and once in a while, I hit a good one even though I don’t do everything right.  Those are the ones that keep me coming back.

So for Valentine’s Day one year, my wife gave me a great gift. It was a golf fitting for new clubs. It was a really great experience for me and I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so excited! This was something I had always wanted to do.  

When the day came for me to go to the fitting, I walked in at 3:30 pm for my appointment and I was met by this really high-energy guy named James. He could tell I had one eye on the bay where you get to try out the new clubs. But before he would let me take a swing, he asked me a question, “Why are you here?” My response was not well thought out, nor very accurate it turns out.  

I told James “I have always wanted to do this and I am really excited,” I quipped, just wanting to get into that bay and hit a ball with the newest technology golf club makers have to offer.

“Awesome!” James responded, with so much enthusiasm that it was effervescent coming out of him.

But, then he changed his tone, took his enthusiasm down about 3 notches, and said, “I appreciate your excitement, but why are you here? What is it that you are trying to achieve through this experience in your golf game?” 

Dang! I had been so excited about the opportunity, I completely lost focus on the problem I was trying to solve. 

“I want to hit the ball straighter and further,” I said in response. 

“Good,” he said. “I can help you do that, but I don’t think that is why you are here.”

Now I was a bit stunned, perplexed, and feeling a little like I was about to enter a therapy session. 

“I give,” I said…”Why am I here?”

“Exactly,” James said again…” Why are you here?” He didn’t answer my question for me but was going to make me answer. It was like therapy!!

Then, a light went off for me about skill. “I want to be a better golfer. No, wait, I want to lower my golf score. and I want to be more competitive on the golf course.”

“Yes!” James yelled. Literally yelled. I mean he screamed it so loud I think people having dinner at Chick-fil-A across the street could have heard him.

“Let's work to solve that problem,” James said when he calmed down. And when we got in the simulator and I would hit a ball 30 yards further with a new club, he would say, “Now that shot will lower your score on the course!” 

Being Coached

James either had a natural ability or someone had trained him on some excellent coaching techniques. As I reflected on that experience, James was actually pulling from some great psychology as he was preparing me to buy golf clubs. (Hey, James had a goal, too. Make no mistake, he gets paid to sell golf clubs, and I love the set he sold me!)

RIDE*

Here is a model I use in coaching when problems that have negative emotions are brought to the discussion.  I try to find a way for the person NOT to “RIDE” the negative train. I use the acronym RIDE as a process. Each element is really an independent tool, so you do not have to use them all or think of them in a stepwise fashion.

The problem I had in my golf fitting example was that I had lost my perspective on why I was there. Here is what James helped me with, even if he didn’t know the psychology behind it.

R: Remove the negative thing. This strategy employs taking the thing that is negatively impacting me out of the situation. My excitement was clouding my perspective to see why I was really there.

I: Insert a more positive perspective. This can involve distracting my attention away from the issue causing negative emotions. He took my emotion that to me felt positive - but it actually was negative because it was in my way of seeing the problem and got me to the root of why I was there in the first place.

D: Distract the attention from the negative thing. Finding something less negative can put the problem in perspective. James had me sit down, then offered me a Powerade as he was asking me about my expectations. He was distracting me away from my excitement so I could focus.

E: Emotionally Pivot. Help the person change the emotion to match the problem. James brought me down so skillfully off my high, never losing his enthusiasm, but helped me focus so that when I got in the bay I was calmer and he could do his job. Nice work, James.

How about you as a leader? If you go back to your reflection exercise at the beginning of this post, could you insert one of the elements of the RIDE model to help someone on your team?

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*For all you academics out there, the RIDE model was derived from research done by Little, Gooty, and Williams and published in Leadership Quarterly 2016. The article is titled: The role of leader emotion management in leader-member exchange and follower outcomes.

Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

Because of the pandemic over the last couple of years, our virtual work world seems to be here to stay. One thing the pandemic has caused organizations to rethink is how work is done. What people do has remained pretty consistent over these couple of years, but how they get it done has made some seismic shifts, causing in part what some are calling a “talent migration.” 

From my vantage point, an overwhelming part of the great talent migration has to do with workplace flexibility. I also think that this movement is away from what we all knew as a traditional flex model to hybrid work. In the traditional flex model, an employee could work (wink, wink) a day or so from home when needed. Some organizations even went as far as to declare a specified work-from-home day. The shift that employees started asking for, or perhaps even requiring through this crisis, is that they want to work from home indefinitely or want to only come into an office only when absolutely necessary.

This shift evolves as workers reprioritize what is important in their lives. Organizations need to brace themselves for new levels of competition and get used to not having as much talent around to compete with each other. At the end of the day, what wins this tug of war is the culture of the organization. Those organizations with great cultures will have much less migration than those that merely think they have a great culture. 

There will always be a story of a person who leaves and triples his/her salary. I think we all tip our hats to them and say “good for you.” However, as leaders, let's not be fooled into thinking that people always leave just for money. Employees want to be fairly compensated for what they do. The leadership and cultural battle is going to be waged not on what the associate is asked to do, but on how they can do it.

I think the call for us as leaders is to engage strategic thinking around flexible, hybrid work. In leadership, the future belongs to the curious and flexible. Those who can engage a growth mindset, be curious about what the talent is looking for, and be agile with the changing business landscape will evolve and win.  Those with a fixed mindset may get their way. The question is for how long.  Like it or not, hybrid work is here to stay, in some form or fashion. Even long after all the viruses have mutated away or herd immunity is achieved, some mix of working from home for knowledge workers is here to stay.

Like many of you, I also had to learn to adapt to this new business reality. Everything from virtual doctor appointments, to picking out tile for a remodeled bathroom, to individual and group coaching sessions have gone from face-to-face interactions to options for a virtual environment. I am realizing that no matter how much I want work to go back to the way it was before the pandemic, it will not.

Since I am imploring leaders to have a growth mindset around hybrid work, I have been challenging myself to see what encouragement I could offer to enhance the skills of leaders to retain talent. This has led me to observe how people are interacting virtually. 

Most of us have long gotten past some of the initial communication disruptions like dogs barking in the background, or cats climbing on keyboards, or people walking in the background of a video chat. The struggle became about being more effective with people when you are not in the same room.

Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

1. Focus on Energy. Judith Glaser in her book "Conversational Intelligence" encourages leaders to make communication about the exchange of energy and not information. She calls this Transformational Communication and it is a Share-Discover model versus an Ask-Tell dynamic. When you focus on the energy in the conversation, you create space by exploring others' perspectives, innovating, and creating. As a leader, you move from listening to the other person to protect yourself and your idea to instead listening to ensure you connect with the other person and they feel heard. The skill to develop here as a leader is for you to ask questions you don’t have answers to and to help the other person feel heard.

2. Principle of Physicality. This is a term I coined some years ago when working with sales professionals who had to be ready at a moment's notice to communicate with a customer. Pay attention to your physical environment. Get some good feedback from others on what your physical environment looks like on a video call.

   What is your background? It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be professional.

   1. How is your camera positioned? Are you looking at it or is it pointing down at the top of your head? 

   2. What kind of lighting do you have? If you are not well lit, people can't see you very well.

   3. How are you connecting with audio? Can you maintain a consistent audio connection for an entire call?

3. Give Trust. Many of us, with this hybrid model, have to rethink what trust means to us. The employment agreement we have had with folks has always been built on trust. The difference is we thought as long as we were coming into an office and could see the employees was that they were working. With the knowledge workers of today, leaders need to learn to set clear expectations for what and how work is to be approached and then trust that people are doing it. If there is a problem or a gap, then create psychological safety to address the gap. Don’t fall into the trap that the performance gap is the hybrid work model. You don’t know if this gap would not have existed if the person was coming into an office every day. Remember, the employment agreement is still built on trust. As leaders, we may need to spend some time thinking about what this means for us. If assumptions in how people work have been changing, what do we need to change to accommodate?

Flexibility is a significant part of a leader's emotional intelligence. Understanding and being flexible with how you feel about things prevents you from developing a fixed mindset. Stay open. Stay curious. If people are migrating away from your organization, work hard to find the real reason why.

Are Your Goals Making You Sore or Helping You Soar?

Remember back in January when you had that new year motivation and fresh start attitude? You had all of this pent-up passion for making something change this year. You had the idea that something was going to be different this year from your previous rut.

Once you identified the “what” you wanted to change, your next step was to set some goals for yourself. Most of us set goals for work, travel, or maybe even working out at a gym.

Do you remember your goals from the beginning of the year? Do you remember where you wrote them down or typed them? Are they still in legible form or has the Post-It Note you wrote them on started to curl around the edges with its spotlight position on the refrigerator now covered by last month's grocery list?

Have you made any progress on the goals you set?

You might even have named your goals something like “BHOG” (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), Key Results Area, Performance Management Objective, Personal Development Plan, or some other colloquial term that you or your organization or discipline uses.

It is now September, and it is time to go back and check in on what was important to you at the beginning of the year. Ask yourself, "Have I accomplished my goals, or did I get off track?”

It can be quite common for people to not to want to review the goals they set earlier in the year, especially if they know they have not made the progress they hoped. The feeling of discouragement can become overwhelming when we see a lack of progress and we know we aren't where we had hoped to be by now when the goal was originally set.

Stay in the game.

Discouragement can be devastating when it comes to goals. In my experience, it can be one of the hardest obstacles to overcome.

The goal had meaning and significance to you 9 months ago, so it's time to start asking yourself some questions as to why you are not making progress this far into the year. You HAVE NOT failed! You have likely learned a lot in 8-9 months about the goal and your progress if you just stop and think about it.

An analogy came to me the other day that may have some application:

In January, you set your goal. Let's say you wanted to exercise three days a week for an hour. Think of this goal as getting on an airplane. You are all buckled in your seat and ready for take-off. You know the goal. It is written down and it actually feels comfortable.

The plane starts down the runway, shakes, and surges as it gains speed. All of a sudden, it is February. You likely have taken a couple of steps toward goal attainment. You are gaining speed and you can feel the inertia of the plane starting to lift off. In regards to your goal, maybe you called around to see what gym would best fit your needs. You went out and bought new exercise clothes and maybe some shoes. The feeling and speed of the change felt good.

Then comes March. The plane reaches 30,000 feet, the seat belt sign comes off, and the plane levels out. And the exercise doldrums set in. You no longer feel the rush of take-off. You no longer can sense the speed of the plane. This is when goal attainment becomes difficult. When it feels like you are not making any progress at all.

This feeling is not real.

The interesting thing to me is the lie that our emotions give us in this context. While the positive “dopamine” feeling of starting to work on the goal may be long gone by September, the important thing to realize is that the plane is still going 450 miles an hour even when you can’t feel it. You are still moving. You are still experiencing progress. Even though you have said goodbye to 8 months of the year, YOU are still flying. Realize your plane is still in the air. You have not crashed. YOU HAVE NOT FAILED!

Instead of assuming that you are way off track and that you've already failed, step back and look at your goal objectively. Think about the time when you set your goals — were they SMART goals?

Most likely you've heard this acronym and even used it when setting goals, but it is helpful to use to check up on your goals or even get back on track. Was it…?

• Specific? When getting specific with your goal, don't just consider what your goal is, but why and how you want to achieve it. Perhaps you want to work on developing young leaders. Your why might be because you want to prepare them for more responsibility in the future and your how will be through professional development workshops or one-on-one mentoring sessions.

• Measurable? Are you able to see where you are right now and where you'll end up? If you are not able to track the progress of obtaining the goal along the way, you'll have a hard time seeing if you succeeded in the end or staying motivated along the way.

• Achievable and Realistic? I feel the A and R in our acronym go hand in hand in some ways. When you figure out your goal, how to do it, and when to accomplish it, you have to think about the parameters and circumstances that you are working in that will make it possible. This isn't to discourage you from setting the goal, but rather to encourage you to think about how you will make sure you complete the goal and ensure that it's not completely out of reach or asking too much from your team. At this point, something may have come up in the last 8 months that have changed your circumstance and deterred your goal. That's okay. Life happens. Instead of seeing it as a failure or no longer attainable, just think about what changes need to be made to your goal, the plan, or the timeline. Don't be tempted to start from scratch, instead, make less work for yourself by simply re-evaluating and tweaking what's already in progress and steer it back on track.

• Time-bound? Some of you may have set goals that you've already completed, others might feel the pressure of the time ticking away. Use the time as positive pressure to get the work done, not to stress you out. If you feel constrained, give yourself a break and allow yourself more time. If it's a project with a deadline, reach out to your team or manager and see how you can work together to get it completed. Also, consider how you are using your time and what could be distracting you from focusing on your goal. What limits do you need to implement personally to give yourself time and focus to achieve this goal?

Most importantly, remember the why behind your goal and the reasons that motivated you to set the goal in the first place. Visualize what it will look like for you and your team when that goal is accomplished. Write this down and keep it somewhere you'll see it and can read it often. (Perhaps avoid the refrigerator this time!)

Keep yourself in the air and land that goal safely on the ground.

Homework:

Take a look at the goal you set at the beginning of the year. Grab a coach, mentor, or trusted advisor and share with them your SMART goal. Listen to any advice they have for you. Be encouraged by the progress you have made (even if it feels like you are flying in circles). Decide with your support system what steps you need to take to land your plane safely. Set up another meeting with them in November for a progress check and then in December for a celebration of your achievement.