Episode 93 - Is the Problem Worth Tackling?

Summary

People will bring complaints about colleagues to you as their leader. How do you figure out if an issue is worth tackling? There is a simple question that can help. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 93 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore how to figure out if a potential issue between staff is worth tackling. This week’s podcast is going to be even shorter than usual, but I can assure you it will save you countless hours.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience as a leader before - if you haven’t, it’s only a matter of time before you do. Someone in your team, let’s call them Jan, comes to you to discuss an “issue” they’re having with a colleague - let’s call the colleague Steve. Jan wants you to do something about this problem with Steve. Maybe Jan thinks Steve is talking too loudly on the phone, or heating something obnoxious in the microwave for lunch, or there’s some kind of vague personality clash about Steve smiling too much, or Jan just thinks Steve isn’t pulling his weight. You ask Jan whether she has discussed the issue with Steve directly. “No”. You then ask Jan whether she would be comfortable to have that conversation with Steve directly. “No”. And now we’re stuck.

What is our role as leader at this point? The general principle is simple - we should encourage the person with the issue to talk directly to the person they are having an issue with. But what if they don’t feel comfortable doing that, and still want you to do something about the perceived problem. And what if the perceived problem sits right on the fence. It can be challenging to know when to intervene and when to just let things slide. 

There is a question to ask at this point that can save everyone a lot of time and confusion. It’s simply this - “What’s the business issue?”

Steve’s loud talking on the phone might be distracting and frustrating other people. The business issue is lost productivity and engagement. That’s worth tackling directly.

Steve’s smelly microwaved lunch is wafting into the reception area, and several clients have complained about the smell. The business issue is the impact on our reputation with clients. That’s worth tackling.

Steve is smiling too much. Well, I’m struggling to find the business issue there. It’s not worth tackling.

Jan thinks Steve isn’t pulling his weight, but you have the results to suggest that he is. Again, there’s no business issue there.

Using the business issue test with the individual raising the complaint can be really helpful. That will help Jan to work out what things are worth her worrying about versus those things worth letting slide.

I’ve found the business issue test really helpful in highlighting what are real problems worth tackling, and what are interpersonal issues that might need to be navigated in a different way.

Well I hope you found that helpful. I received a couple of really encouraging emails from listeners to the podcast this week. You can always get in contact via the Leadership.Today website (he says, clearly fishing for a few more). And, if you do have time, a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to this makes a huge difference. 

Just a quick reminder about our online workshops and webinars. Go to the Live page on our website to find out more about the seven different workshops we offer, and also to register for an upcoming free monthly webinar. I would love to have you along.

Have a great week.

Episode 92 - Five Ways to Stop Zoom Killing Your Focus

Summary

Video conferencing has rapidly increased in popularity, but the cognitive and attentional load can make it exhausting. In this week’s Leadership Today podcast we look at five ways to stop Zoom killing your focus. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 92 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at five ways to stop Zoom killing your focus. 

Zoom and other video conferencing services have seen a rapid rise in popularity. People have flocked to video conferencing as the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting, particularly when trying to build social connection. During a global pandemic, video conferencing has proven to be a lifesaver for many people forced to work from home. It’s a testament to the quality of Zoom that the brand name is now synonymous with web-based video conferencing. We are becoming increasingly dependent on access to Zoom, as evidenced by a recent outage that disrupted millions of people including online schooling and businesses. 

And Zoom isn’t just a back up for when we can’t be face-to-face. Research conducted last year showed Zoom was rated positively for qualitative data collection in health care interviews, coming in ahead of face-to-face, phone and other video conferencing options when they factored efficiency into the equation.

Amidst all of that success and celebration there are recurring and largely anecdotal concerns emerging about the impact of video conferencing on our attention and energy levels. People report feeling drained and exhausted at the end of a full day of Zoom calls. It’s too early for there to be specific research about why this might be the case, but the field of attention research gives us some clues to why Zoom is killing our ability to focus.

Let’s face it, weird things happen on Zoom calls that would never happen in a ‘real’ meeting. We see people fixing their hair as they stare at themselves. People keep looking away from the camera to a second screen so you end up having a conversation with their ear. People eating anything looks disgusting - seriously, stop eating while using Zoom. We see people talking but no words are coming out - you’re on mute! Surprise people and their pets appear out of nowhere. People keep trying to talk at the same time which leads to a flurry of “no, no, you go first”. As we look behind people it feels like we are in a dozen different rooms at once. And, while we’re talking backgrounds, why not include an even more distracting virtual background? Sure, you’re on a beach, or drifting through space. In a sign of just how confused we are, we even feel the need to wave goodbye at the end of a Zoom call. It’s exhausting.

What are the challenges of Zoom calls, or indeed most other video conferencing tools? There are three main issues:

1. Visual distractions. We are not used to seeing ourselves in action, and it’s easy to become fixated, or at least distracted, by how we look. It’s easy for the meeting to then feel like a performance. Simultaneously seeing multiple faces is also strange. We wouldn’t normally have people lined up in a grid like the start of the Brady Bunch, but rather be attending to one or two faces at any point in time. Reseach has repeatedly demonstrated that visual distractions significantly decrease our ability to focus and increase stress.

2. Auditory distractions. The inability for everyone to speak at once is a real issue. The small delays and “loudest person wins” nature of Zoom make auditory processing a challenge. The audio itself is of a higher quality than a typical phone call, but it still feels more draining than a landline phone call due to these artefacts. 

3. You can’t look into someone’s eyes. I might try to fake eye contact by staring at the camera, but then I can’t see you. Thankfully, research demonstrates that people are lousy at figuring out if we’re making eye contact in real life anyway. In fact researchers found that we can’t pick the difference between someone looking into our eyes versus looking predominantly at our mouth. But on Zoom, the distance between the camera and the person’s face is larger than a real human face - the effect of not making eye contact is more pronounced.

All of this leads to an increased cognitive and attentional load. We end up suffering from what researchers call continuous partial attention.

So Zoom - is it worth it? That largely depends on the work and what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re after interaction, trust and engagement, it’s hard to beat face-to-face. If face-to-face is not possible, Zoom is a great backup. We just need to recognise and manage the risks.

In particularly we need to minimise visual distractions - research has show that this leads to a 16% boost in performance for time-sensitive, high focus work, while also reducing stress by 18%. Reducing auditory distractions will also help. 

So how do we reduce distractions and the cognitive and attentional load of Zoom calls and meetings. Here are five suggestions:

1. Hide the self view. Check that your video feed looks okay at the start of the call, then use the menu on your own image so you can no longer see yourself. Just keep in mind that others can still see you - there’s a reason webcams have little lights on them to show when you’re on. Search Zoom call fails on YouTube for some great examples.

2. Use the speaker view. Rather than having everyone on screen at once in equal size boxes, shift to just being able to see the speaker. I’ve found this really helps me to focus on one person at a time, rather than trying to attend to a sea of faces.

3. Mute when not speaking. Muting yourself reduces the audio distractions for others. We need to treat a Zoom call like it’s not fully duplex, particularly as group sizes increase. Despite any claims to the contrary, the experience of multiple people trying to speak at once is far more painful on Zoom than in real life. 

4. Make it interactive. In the field of online learning there’s a popular myth that people can’t attend to any video that’s longer than 6 minutes. There doesn’t seem to be much concrete evidence to back that up and, in fact, research shows that you can increase beyond that easily by making the video more interactive. The same principle applies to Zoom calls. Use polls, chat, breakout rooms, annotations, reactions - anything to spice things up and make it less of a presentation.

5. Reduce the length of your meetings. Recognise the cognitive and attentional load by making meetings shorter. As a rule of thumb I reduce the length of Zoom calls by a third to what I would expect people to engage in face-to-face.

And if none of that works, hey, here’s a crazy idea - why not try a phone conference call instead? Use a bit of variety and gain ideas and input from your team about how to improve things.

Now I’m sure a lot of these technical issues will become smoothed out over time. Someone will figure out how to mount a camera behind a screen to mimic face-to-face, and I’m sure the audio challenges will reduced. Perhaps people will listen back at this episode in 5 years and think - well, how quaint! However, keep in mind the broader principle that focus and distractions are enemies. Anything we can do to reduce visual and auditory distractions at work are going to make a difference, whether it’s online or in an office.

What have been your Zoom experiences? Make contact via the Leadership.Today website and let me know. I love a good story. Have a great week.

References

Archibald, M. M., Ambagtsheer, R. C., Casey, M. G., & Lawless, M. (2019). Using Zoom Videoconferencing for Qualitative Data Collection: Perceptions and Experiences of Researchers and Participants. International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

Haworth Human Performance Lab. Visual Distraction Effects on Deliberate Focus Work.  2017 http://media.haworth.com/asset/96533/VisualDistractions.ResearchReport.201708.Johnson.pdf

Kathy Roper and Parminder Juneja Distractions in the workplace revisited. May 2008 Journal of Facilities Management 6(2):91-109

Nitza Geri, Amir Winer, Beni Zaks. Challenging the six-minute myth of online video lectures: Can interactivity expand the attention span of learners? Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management Volume 5, Issue 1, 2017

Shane L. Rogers, Oliver Guidetti, Craig P. Speelman, Melissa Longmuir, Ruben Phillips. Contact Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Eye Contact Illusion. Perception, 2019

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/24/zoom-apologises-after-being-hit-by-partial-global-outage

Episode 91 - Team Meetings That Bring Out The Best In People

Summary

In this week’s Leadership Today podcast we look at a structure for team meetings to bring out the best in your people.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 91 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at how to structure team meetings to bring out the best in your people.

A study released in July 2020 looked at the impact of pandemic-related lockdowns on over three million people across North America, Europe and the Middle East. Scouring through de-identified data from a technology firm, they found the number of meetings per person increased 13%, as did the number of attendees per meetings (14%). However the average length of meetings decreased by 20%, with an overall impact of people spending 12% less time per day in meetings. So more, shorter meetings with more people, but less time per day in meetings overall. But how effective are all those meetings?

In episode 89 we looked at ways to make meetings better. Last week in episode 90 I shared a monthly one-on-one meeting structure. This week we round out our focus on meetings by walking through a team meeting structure I have been using for years.

You will find the structure in the show notes. It includes:

Positives

What’s going well?

Negatives

What’s not going well? What's getting in the way at work?

Priorities

What are the current priorities as a team?

Support

How can we best support each other?

Interesting

What is on the horizon that we are noticing?

Anything else to discuss?

Action Items

Review action items from previous month

Add any new action items

It’s important to start off with the positives and a reflection on what is going well. Depending on the size of the team this might involve some time for people to share the positives in twos and threes before summarising them back to the broader team. It’s really easy to skate right past the positives. We have a tendency to underplay our successes as we shift our focus to the next big thing. However celebrations are important. Use the positives part of the meeting to recognise these accomplishments.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the discussion of positives is followed by negatives. We can sometimes be scared of talking about the negatives and what’s getting in the way at work. As I’ve shared before, frustrations have a disastrous impact on well-being and productivity. We need to air the negatives, but also bring a focus on improvement and action.

Next we cover priorities. To be clear, this isn’t about having each individual share their own priorities, but rather looking at priorities at a team-level. This discussion helps everyone to have a shared understanding of what really matters.

That leads naturally to a discussion around support. Given the priorities and challenges we have discussed, how can we best support each other? That includes supporting each other by sharing around the work load, but could also include other ways of offering support.

I always include a section in team meetings focused on interesting things. This could include things that people are noticing in the organisation, observations about clients, customers or competitors - really anything that might be of interest that doesn’t neatly fit into the positive or negative categories.

The final section of the meeting is focused on action items. We take this time to review any action items from the previous month, and add any new action items.

As per the monthly one-on-one meetings I discussed last week, I share this agenda with the team, and then circulate a bullet point summary of what we discussed afterwards, just in a Word document, with the most recent meeting at the top of the document. That document helps new team members to quickly come up to speed by reviewing the main points from the last few team meetings.

If you are running your team meetings exclusively online, I would add some time at the start of the meeting as a quick check in to see how people are doing. This is particularly important for new team members who may not have met others face-to-face. You might also profile a different team member each month, having them share something about themselves like a favourite holiday destination including a photo. Building trust and connection is very difficult online, so it’s worth building that into your meetings if they are exclusively online.

And you may be wondering about the monthly timing for these meetings. By all means you can meet with your team more often than monthly, however I believe it makes a big difference to have a more formal meeting once a month.

As always I love receiving feedback on episodes. You can make contact via the website at Leadership.Today. That’s where you’ll find today’s show notes, complete with the meeting structure that you’re welcome to adapt for your team. Have a great week.

Reference

Collaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work

Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeffrey T. Polzer, Raffaella Sadun

NBER Working Paper No. 27612 Issued in July 2020

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27612

Episode 90 - Monthly One-On-One Meetings

Summary

Monthly one-on-one meetings - we all know we should have them, but we might be less clear about what to discuss. This week we revisit a structure for monthly one-on-one meetings that will take your leadership to the next level. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 90 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we revisit a structure for monthly one-on-one meetings that will take your leadership to the next level. 

For those playing the long game with the Leadership Today podcast, you might recall that we discussed monthly one-on-one meetings way back in August 2018 with episode 4 in the context of performance reviews. I think it’s a topic worth revisiting all on its own, because so few leaders have structured one-on-one meetings with their people.

Over the past month I’ve been running quite a few of our online workshop, The Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership. Towards the end of the one hour workshop I typically mention that I have examples of one-on-one and team meeting structures, and participants are always keen to take a look. I think as leaders we often want to do the right thing, but we’re not sure what the right thing is. The theory is great, but it’s even better to look at what all that research ends up looking like in practice. So this week’s podcast is extremely practical, and you will want to review the show notes at the Leadership Today website where you can highlight and copy the one-on-one meeting structure. Next week I’ll share my monthly team meeting structure.

Now I’m not saying that these structures are perfect for everyone in every situation, but I have road tested them with hundreds of leaders, and also applied them with the people and teams that I lead. They have really helped me to lead effectively, and I’m sure they will do the same for you as well. You are welcome to adapt them to your needs.

I suggest you have a more structured one-on-one meeting each month. You may already be meeting with individuals more often than that, but this structure will help you to make that a little more formal and interactive. Here’s an overview of the structure and topics.

Performance

What are you currently doing well?

What do you need to work on?

Priorities

What are your current priorities?

What goals need to be added, removed or updated?

Manager Support

What's getting in the way at work?

How might we address this?

Training and Development

How is your development plan progressing?

What training and development experiences might be beneficial?

Other

Anything else to discuss?

Action Items

Review action items from previous month

Add any new action items

I share this agenda with people, then ask them to come prepared to our meeting with bullet points under each topic. I also come prepared with my own bullet point thoughts. I’m clear about my intent for the meeting - this is as much about helping them as it is about helping me. It’s not a performance review - it’s a structured update to help us to work together more effectively.

Let’s start with performance. We don’t talk about performance enough and, as a result, people are often uncomfortable with performance discussions. Discussing performance each month helps to normalise it. People are expected to come to the meeting prepared with a list of what they think they are currently doing well, and also what they need to work on. When we as their leader do the same, it’s an opportunity to build a more comprehensive picture of their performance. Some people are overly hard on themselves and just focus on their development needs. As a leader you can build them up by pointing out what they’re doing well. Others might overestimate their performance or understate their need for development. Including discussion about what they need to work on helps highlight that we all have things to work on. The moment we think we’re perfect is the same moment we confirm that we’re not perfect.

Next up is priorities. There may be priorities for your people that you’re not aware of. Discussing priorities helps you to establish and clarify what the priorities are from your perspective. This additional clarity is like oxygen for your people. If you’ve ever worked in a role that lacked clarity around priorities, you know just how debilitating that can be. Here we also talk about goals. This isn’t just to track how the person is going against their goals, but also an opportunity to add new goals, remove goals that are completed or no longer relevant, and to update other goals. In that way we’re not treating goals as “set and forget” - it’s helping to recognise that circumstances change, and a monthly revisit of goals is extremely useful.

Next is manager support. People face frustrations that they may not otherwise share with you unless you ask. They may not think a frustration or obstacle is worth raising with you. So we need to ask the question directly - what’s getting in the way at work? Now, just because we ask the question doesn’t mean that, as a leader, we take sole responsibility for fixing the issue. It’s far better to work with the person to help them to remove the obstacle wherever that is possible. But there will be occasions where something needs to be addressed at your level, to either remove the frustration or reduce the impact on your people.

It’s easy to let training and development plans slip, so it’s great to explore progress on a monthly basis. With staff who are at earlier points in their career I spend time in this section building their resume. We discuss what they can now do that they couldn’t do a month ago. This is a great way of highlighting the progress they are making, as it’s very easy to not reflect on what development has been achieved. You can also use this section of the meeting to explore other development opportunities. Keep in mind that this isn’t just training courses - it could be shadowing someone from another team, working on a new project, or presenting at a team meeting. Help expand the possibilities for development even further.

The section called other is a chance to discuss anything else that doesn’t fit into the headings we’ve covered so far. We want to give our people every opportunity to share with us whatever is on their mind. 

At the end of the meeting there is time to cover any action items that were committed to the previous month, and also an opportunity for the leader and their direct report to add any actions for the coming month. This helps both you and those you lead to be accountable for actions to which you have agreed. 

I find these meetings take around 45 minutes to an hour with new staff, gradually settling in to around 30 to 45 minutes over time. It’s not a great deal of time and effort to invest in your people. 

I encourage you to give this one-on-one meeting structure a go. You might even share this episode with your team to introduce the approach. The feedback I’ve had from people who have implemented it has been very positive, and I would love to hear how it goes for you as well.

Have a great week and I look forward to sharing a team meeting structure with you next week.

Episode 89 - Better (and Fewer) Meetings Now!

Summary

The amount of time leaders spend in meetings has increased dramatically over the past 50 years. But so too, thankfully, has our understanding of what makes a meeting effective. It’s time to have better (and fewer) meetings now!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 89 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at ways to have better (and fewer) meetings now!

Over the past 50 years, the average amount of time leaders spend in meetings has steadily increased from below 10 hours per week in the 1960s to now approaching 23 hours per week. And the recent proliferation of video conferencing has removed the travel time between meetings altogether. We can now move from meeting to meeting without even leaving our desk. As a result, many of the clients I am working with describe an increase in meetings with remote working, and the associated demands that places on their time.

Research into the attitudes of senior managers towards meetings identifies 65% of people who see meetings getting in the way of completing work. A similar percentage, 64%, see meetings being at the expense of deep concentration work. It’s hard to get into the flow if you have meetings scheduled every other hour. 

Other research by Desmond Leach and colleagues looked into the factors that lead meetings to be rated as effective by participants. They examined a range of factors including the use of an agenda, keeping minutes, punctuality, the appropriateness and comfort of the room facilities, the number of attendees, the length of the meetings and the use of a chairperson. Of all of these, they found the three most important factors were:

1. Agenda use - distributing an agenda ahead of time, sticking to it during the meeting and completing all the items on the agenda

2. Punctuality - both starting and finishing the meeting on time

3. Facilities - having an appropriate room that is setup well, and that is comfortable and quiet

The researchers noted that these three factors are important independent of the type of meeting. So whether the meeting is for routine issues, information sharing, or emerging problems the three key factors are agenda, punctuality and facilities.

Of course with so many meetings now occurring online, it’s easy to translate the meeting room facilities finding across to the technology platforms we are using. When we are meeting online, the technology is the setting. Video conferencing software continues to improve dramatically, but does call for a different skill set to be used effectively. If you have used a particularly clunky platform, you know how detrimental that can be to the meeting, independent of the agenda and punctuality. What I call ‘mixed mode meetings’ are particularly challenging - where you have some people individually online, and others sitting together in a room or across several rooms. It’s extremely difficult to maintain a balance between the two types of meeting attendees. It’s for that reason that I recommend either having everyone in the same room, or having everyone individually online, but don’t mix the two unless you have the high end technology to pull that off.

Bringing all of that together, here are five ways to have better (and fewer) meetings now:

1. Begin by asking “Does this need to be a meeting?”  Meetings are most effective when you need real time interaction, where people are Interdependent and generating new ideas. Being in the same place at the same time allows people to build on others ideas in real time. It’s also appropriate to call people together for celebrations, milestones and recognition. However, if it is one-way information sharing or updates without discussion, switch it to another format using video, email or collaboration software. There’s no need to have everyone together at the same time for information sharing.

2. Set some shared expectations for those scheduling and facilitating meetings. Some organisations require a meeting to have a clear purpose and agenda before it can be scheduled. In addition I would look carefully at the attendee list in terms of the role each person is expected to play in the meeting. If you can’t identify why someone is required, then save them the bother and don’t invite them. The excuse of inviting people ‘just in case something comes up’ is not a good enough reason to eat into their time. It’s a lazy way to lead.

3. Make meetings shorter. Parkinson’s law states that work will expand to fill the time available, and the same is true of meetings. Yet suspiciously few meetings are scheduled for less than an hour in length. Why not give a 20 or 30 minute meeting a go. And make sure you complete the agenda. Desmond Leach’s research demonstrates that people become particularly frustrated when a long meeting doesn’t complete the agenda.

4. Start and finish on time. Punctuality really matters to people. I’ve seen some organisations that are brilliant at this, with everyone ready to go at the appointed time. Unfortunately, for every one of those organisations, there are others where people routinely arrive 5, 10 or 15 minutes late - with the person chairing the meeting simply waiting for everyone to arrive. That’s a great way to encourage people to arrive even later next time.

5. Look for improvements. It’s important to leave time at the end of the agenda to reflect on the effectiveness of the meeting. That might include discussing what we did well and what we need to improve. 

We all need connection and collaboration. Following these research-based tips will help ensure you’re only having the meetings that really matter, and that we’re making the most of the investment of people’s time and energy.

While I have your attention can I please ask you a favour. If you haven’t already, please provide a rating or review wherever you download your podcasts. There’s a reason why every podcast host asks you to do it, as it really does help others to find the podcast. Have a great week, and I look forward to sharing some more practical leadership research with you next week. 

References

Stop the Meeting Madness. Leslie A. Perlow , Constance Noonan Hadley and Eunice Eun, Harvard Business Review July–August 2017

Perceived Meeting Effectiveness: The Role of Design Characteristics. Desmond J. Leach, Steven G. Rogelberg, Peter B. Warr, Jennifer L. Burnfield, Journal of Business Psychology, 2009 24:65–76.

Episode 88 - To Impress, Do Less

Summary

You’ve heard the well-known Oscar Wilde quote “Be yourself - everyone else is already taken”. Yet we often tempted to be something that we’re not. But the research shows us to impress, do less.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 88 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week discover that a great way to impress is to do less.

You’ve heard the well-known Oscar Wilde quote “Be yourself - everyone else is already taken”. Yet we often tempted to be something that we’re not. We often try to present ourselves the way we think others want to see us, rather than as we truly are.

If that sounds like you, you’re not alone. Research shows that, when given the opportunity, 66% of people try to impress by catering to the other person’s needs. In addition, 71% thought catering would be the best approach. Research also demonstrates that trying to impress is precisely the wrong strategy, especially when it comes at the expense of being ourselves.

This is particularly the case when we don’t know much about the people we’re trying to impress. That could include a presentation, a job interview, a sales pitch or a range of other scenarios.

To explore this further researchers set up a scenario where people were applying for a fictional job. Participants in the study were then placed into one of two groups. The first group was encouraged to be themselves - to try to be genuine and authentic. The second group was encouraged to try to position themselves in the way they thought aligned with the interviewer’s expectations and interests - to cater to their needs. Those who were encouraged to just be themselves were 26% more likely to be hired than those who tried to become something they weren’t in an effort to impress.

A second study was conducted at a forum where entrepreneurs were pitching ideas to a panel of judges. The entrepreneurs who were genuine in their approach were three times more likely to be selected by judges than those who tried to cater to what they thought the judges wanted to hear.

Why is being yourself better than trying to cater to what you think people want to hear? Researchers suggest three main reasons:

1. It’s cognitively hard to not be yourself - we’re not thinking at our best

2. It’s emotionally draining to not be yourself - we’re not as aware or in control of our emotions

3. We’re anxious because we can’t fully anticipate what the other person may want or expect - we’re putting effort into guessing at their needs and interests

Taken together it’s a recipe for poor performance.

Being yourself makes the best impression. Guessing at others’ needs is far less effective.

Now the next step is if we can genuinely take others’ interests into account. To do that, we need to ask people about their needs and interests. Then we don’t need to guess at their needs, and we can still be ourselves. We can be genuine, informed and empathetic. That sounds much better than guessing at others’ needs and pretending to be something we’re not.

I hope you found that helpful. As always, the research referenced in this episode is available in the show notes at our website - leadership.today

While you’re there, why not check out our upcoming webinar. Each month we run a free 45 minute webinar on a wide range of topics. If you can’t make the session, you will receive a link to a recording to watch at your own time.

Have a great week, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week.

Reference

To be or not to be your authentic self? Catering to others’ preferences hinders performance. Francesca Gino, Ovul Sezer, Laura Huang, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 158, May 2020, Pages 83-100

Episode 87 - Take a Break!

Summary

We routinely prioritise activities that have a deadline over far more important but not urgent activities. That includes our tendency to sacrifice breaks when we’re busy. But a break might be exactly what we need to boost our performance.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 87 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the importance of taking breaks to achieve even higher levels of performance.

Researchers call it the mere urgency effect. It’s the finding that people routinely prioritise tasks with a deadline independent of their importance, over far more important tasks that don’t have a deadline. So even if another activity has much greater potential for outcomes, we will instead focus on a task with a deadline even if it isn’t really that important. The researchers found that this effect is even more pronounced in those who consider themselves to be ‘busy’. 

Being busy and being effective rarely go together. We have work cultures that celebrate busy-ness above all else. I remember being cc’d on a farewell email which repeatedly spoke about the long hours this person worked, and how they had earned a rest in retirement. There was no mention of the outcomes they achieved, the difference they made to the business, or the legacy they left in others - just the long hours and the well-earned rest. Is that what you want to hear at your retirement?

The science shows that we need both stress and recovery to be truly effective. Long hours without breaks are not good for productivity and performance. Taking this to the next level, a few organisations have trialled four day weeks. In these cases employees were paid the same as they would have received for a five day week but only needed to work four days. The shorter of the two studies, with Microsoft Japan over a 5 week time frame, saw significant productivity increases of 40%. Another organisation, Perpetual Guardian in New Zealand, found job performance was maintained, but other factors such as engagement, work/life balance and stress all improved markedly. People could deliver just as much if not more in 20% less time. Clearly when it comes to performance not every hour is created equal.

This contrasts with recent research from the UK which showed 82% of people don’t always take breaks. This is despite breaks being legally required for shifts of over 6 hours. The research showed that some people always take breaks, some people rarely take breaks, but most people fluctuate. Even though people were aware of the health and well-being benefits, completing tasks was still prioritised over taking breaks. A break is often seen as optional, and one of the things that is first to go when we get busy. The research also demonstrated that pressure from managers made a difference both ways. The manager sets the tone as to whether breaks are normal or not. We need to be careful about what we role model to our people. If we say ‘take a break’ but routinely eat lunch at our desk, guess which behaviour your people are going to follow?

Here’s the problem - If we see breaks as just an opportunity to boost an individual’s well-being at the expense of productivity, the work will always win. But the science is clear - breaks increase our productivity. Way back in episode 29 we talked about chronotypes - that our energy and attention levels fluctuate across the day, with most people favouring the morning, while some favour the afternoon and evening. But we’re not victims of our chronotype. We can recharge our energy and attention levels through frequent breaks. 

Some years ago I undertook some consulting work with a power plant. The production team was focused on, not surprisingly, production. In their minds the best scenario was to run the plant continuously and never give the plant a break. Then there was the maintenance team. In their mind the best scenario was to never run the plant so everything could be maintained at peak condition. Now those are extreme perspectives and the leaders in those areas wouldn’t express it that clearly, but their actions bore it out. The pressure to run the plant at 100% collided with the risk that the entire plant could be taken out by equipment failure. But the owners and senior leaders tended to favour production over maintenance. The business made money through production, but only ever seemed to lose money through maintenance. Interestingly, even several significant unplanned outages didn’t change their perspective. Clearly well-planned maintenance together with realistic production is the best scenario. 

As human beings we face the same dilemma. Time doing work is favoured over long-term productivity and performance. “Just get it done” is the norm, not “make sure you refresh and re-energise”. 

Is there another way? How might we avoid the mere urgency effect? Here’s how you might make a change:

1. Implement a trial and experiment on yourself. What works for others may not work for you, so prepare to try a few different approaches.

2. Measure your productivity - track it with numbers. This will give you a baseline measure that you can use for comparison.

3. Remove the choice to take breaks - schedule them in and take them. Make breaks as important as a meeting with your boss. I suggest putting them in your calendar so others can’t book meetings over the top.

4. Use breaks to tackle those important but non-urgent activities like refuelling, exercise, connecting with people, or planning for the future. Don’t just fritter the breaks away on time wasters like social media.

5. Measure your energy, attention and productivity across the day. Use an hourly reminder and rate each factor out of 100%.

6. Keep experimenting. Play around with how long you work before a break, with the length of breaks, and with what you do on those breaks. Implement a new trial.

7. As a leader, encourage your people to do the same.

I trust this helps in taking you out of the world of mere urgency, and allows you to deliver even greater results while also looking after yourself and others.

As always, the references used in this episode are in the show notes at the leadership.today website. And while you’re there, follow the “on demand” link to find recorded webinars and our Boost Your Assertiveness online course, all available with a free 7 day trial. 

References

Mike Oliver, Karen Rodham, Jennifer Taylor & Claire McIver (2020) Understanding the psychological and social influences on office workers taking breaks; a thematic analysis, Psychology & Health, DOI: 10.1080/08870446.2020.1764954

Meng Zhu, Yang Yang, Christopher K Hsee (October 2018) The Mere Urgency Effect, Journal of Consumer Research.

Episode 86 - Don't Be So Hard on Yourself

Summary

When things inevitably go wrong, it’s far better to treat yourself like your best friend rather than your worst critic. A little self-compassion goes a long way.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 86 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the importance of self-compassion when we’re faced with setbacks and disappointments.

It was early in my career and it had been a crazy week. We had a client event coming up and needed to get physical invitations out to people as soon as possible. I put my hand up to organise the invitations and get them out the door the same day. After some quick design work and a proof read by a colleague, the invitations were on their way to clients. As the team sat together on the Friday morning that same week, a few printed invites were handed around. I received a few congratulations for having the invitations out so quickly. It was at that point that one of the Directors said “we have a problem here”. I thought he was joking, but the look on his face said otherwise. It turned out that in my haste I had put the wrong street name on the invitation, automatically inserting the street from my previous workplace. At that point, the person who had proof read the invitation and given it the all clear helpfully pointed out that they hadn’t proof read the invitations “for the details”. I was well and truly thrown under the bus. Over 20 years later I can still remember the feeling of embarrassment, disappointment and frustration.

We’ve all had moments like that when we feel like we’ve let others down. They can really play havoc on our well-being and productivity. So how do we best respond in those moments? Research demonstrates that a little self-compassion goes a long way.

Researcher Zessin and colleagues describe self-compassion as “a positive and caring attitude of a person toward her- or himself in the face of failures and individual shortcomings”. Self-compassion is about remaining positive about ourselves, and also treating ourselves in a kind way. Their analysis, combining 79 research papers, found that self-compassion is crucial for well-being. That if we are positive and caring towards ourselves, we are going to be far better off when things inevitably go wrong. We can then maintain our composure and be able to perform more effectively.

Research demonstrates that, when we mess things up, it’s natural to experience negative emotions, reduced self-esteem, and even to feel excluded from the group. Self-compassion appears to buffer individuals from these adverse impacts, helping people to experience fewer negative emotions while still feeling a part of the group that they let down.

Other research shows that those with greater self-compassion feel less stressed when they end up procrastinating. So even if it is just ourselves that we’re letting down, having self-compassion can help a lot.

I was eventually able to see my invitation error as a mistake that anyone could have made, and to draw out learnings from the situation. But it took weeks, not moments, to get to that point. So how do we move to acceptance faster? How do we boost our self-compassion?

To answer those questions, it’s helpful to explore the different elements of self-compassion that researchers focus on. Self-compassion is often divided into three components: self-kindness, mindfulness and common humanity. Each provides an insight into how to build our levels of self-compassion:

1. Self-kindness - here we acknowledge the pain, but are then kind to ourselves. A helpful approach can be to consider how you would respond to a friend in the same situation. We’re often far more compassionate to others than to ourselves. Taking the perspective of a considerate friend can provide a useful vantage point to put our failures into perspective.

2. Mindfulness - this is about being aware of our emotions and keeping them balanced. When things go wrong it’s normal to experience negative emotions, but it’s important to not let ourselves tip into exclusively negative territory. It can be helpful to focus on what we have learned through the situation. We also want to challenge our negative self-talk. Journalling is an approach that can help. The act of writing out the details of the situation and how we are thinking and feeling about events can make it easier to challenge the negative response we might be experiencing.

3. Common humanity - here we are recognising that everyone experiences challenges and set backs. Part of our common humanity is a tendency to get things wrong. Mistakes and growth can go hand in hand if we allow them to. I’ve found that if things are hard then I’m probably learning something - I’m sure that’s true for you too.

So how are you when it comes to self-compassion? It’s far better to act like your best friend rather than your worst critic. Allow yourself to experience the pain and take responsibility when you do mess up, but be kind to yourself so you can move forward.

Well, would you believe it has been two years since I launched the Leadership Today podcast. In that time we’ve had 86 main episodes and 13 Midweek Motivate episodes - 99 in total. Over that time we’ve cracked it onto the management podcast charts in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Singapore, Uganda and the United States. All of this was to help thousands of leaders to achieve results through people for good. I’m really thankful for the people I’ve met along the way, and look forward to extending into our third year. And, as is apparently mandatory at the end of all podcasts, if Leadership Today has been helpful to you, a great way to say thanks is with a rating and review, or just sharing the podcast with a friend. Have a great week.

References

Zessin, U., Dickhäuser, O., & Garbade, S. (2015). The relationship between self‐compassion and well‐being: A meta‐analysis. Applied Psychology: Health and Well‐Being, 7(3), 340-364.

James H. Wirth, Ashley Batts Allen and Emily M. Zitek Self-Compassion Buffers Against the Negative Effects of a Poor Performance. Social Psychology, May 2020.

Sirois, F. M. (2014). Procrastination and stress: Exploring the role of self-compassion. Self and Identity, 13(2), 128-145.

Episode 85 - It Turns Out Development Isn’t Quite 70/20/10

Summary

The most widely cited model when it comes to development is 70/20/10. While it is often referenced, it is also frequently misunderstood. This week we look at why development isn’t quite 70/20/10.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 85 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at why development isn’t quite 70/20/10.

The most widely cited model when it comes to development is 70/20/10. While it is often referenced, it is also frequently misunderstood. The idea is that organisations and individuals should focus development opportunities around three different areas:

• 70% of development should be “on the job”

• 20% should be with “other people”

• 10% should be through “courses”

So where did these suspiciously rounded-off figures come from? 70/20/10 was coined by Bob Eichinger, Mike Lombardo and Morgan McCall in the 1980s with the Center for Creative Leadership. They arrived at the figures based on responses from senior executives about their key development experiences. The 70/20/10 proportions were a rounded-off representation of the themes coming through those reflections. Despite the widespread acceptance of the model, it has also received a number of criticisms, most of which are unfair. For example, some suggest that 70/20/10 is saying that formal learning isn’t important, or that the ‘on the job’ component is passive. Neither of those really reflect the model and the authors’ intent. 

One reasonable criticism is that the work was based on a relatively small number of US executives who also turned out to be predominantly male and white. Anyone who is familiar with research into leadership will recognise this isn’t the only place where this has been a problem. In fact some argue that the bulk of psychological research has been conducted on university and college students - hardly a representative sample of the population. In addition, it does suffer from what we could call ‘survivor bias’. When we ask existing leaders to reflect back on what made them successful, we’re staring back in time to what made these people successful during the 1970s. A similar criticism can be levelled at research based on successful entrepreneurs who gain an almost cult-like status. If we ignore all of the unsuccessful entrepreneurs whose businesses failed, it’s hard to gain a true perspective on what really made the difference for the successful ones. 

The original intent of the model was to encourage organisations to proactively focus on the development of their people, and that a great way of doing that is through the work they conduct, the people they interact with, and the occasional more formal training they undertake. If we accept that original intent, it’s easy to see that 70/20/10 is a helpful guide when considering development opportunities.

Since the original study the Center for Creative Leadership has updated the figures using a broader and more diverse sample. They have drawn out some interesting nuances to the model. Their latest research shows that the 70% “on the job” element is actually made up of challenging assignments (45%) and hardships such as business mistakes or losing a job (22%). So the 70 is actually 67. The updated 20% “other people” is actually 23%. And the 10% “courses” is actually 5% coursework and 5% personal life.

I’m sure you will appreciate that calling 70/20/10 the 45/22/23/5/5 model is far less catchy, so it’s okay to stick with 70/20/10. What I find most interesting is the picking apart of the “on the job” component.

As I flagged earlier, often “on the job” is misinterpreted as passive learning - that somehow learning and development will just happen as people go about their day job. But the “on the job” element is not just business as usual. As CCL have highlighted, 45% of our leadership development tends to be through stretching and challenging assignments. We can take a proactive approach to giving people challenging accountabilities and roles in the context of their development goals. That would go a long way towards helping people to grow and develop. The tension we face in doing that is organisations typically want people who can already do the job, whereas individuals typically want jobs that allow them to develop. So organisations will need to shift towards seeing appointments and promotions as development opportunities, at least in part. We can still assess whether people have potential, but even the best tools still require us to roll the dice a bit on talent. Taking this approach may actually reduce the certainty that someone will work out. But it does reinforce, again, the importance of the “20” (or 23) part of 70/20/10. If we’re going to stretch people, then we really need to surround them with people who can support and encourage their development. Giving someone a stretch assignment is far more like growing a plant from a seedling than it is like screwing in a new light bulb.  

You might want to think about and discuss with your people the kind of stretch assignments that might aide in their development. If I think back through my career, I really wasn’t ready for my first consulting role, my first people management role, my first executive leadership role, or for running my own business. Each transition felt like jumping into the deep end of the pool yet again. But it always felt like I had people around me cheering me on who were prepared to jump in to rescue me occasionally if that’s what it took. In summary, 45% of our development is likely to come from challenging assignments. Work with your people to help identify their development goals and options to safely stretch them.

I find the 22% of development coming from hardships really interesting. Does it mean that we should manufacture hardships for our people? Obviously not, although I do occasionally think that’s what some leaders are trying to do. Rather we should see hardships as a key element of development. They are a great chance to learn, provided people see them that way and are supported to draw out the key development outcomes. Of course, hardships are more likely as you take on greater responsibility. As you work with people to give them challenging assignments, you’re also increasing the risk of hardships. Think back over the hardships in your own career and how much you learned. For me the global financial crisis was one of the greatest business hardships I’ve experienced. I don’t think it’s coincidental that the development gained through that tough time coincided with me being in a stretching role.

Here in July 2020 we’re still in the midst of a global pandemic. Are we helping our people to use this hardship as a development opportunity? Are we taking that mindset into it ourselves? Perhaps one way to help ourselves and our people come through this time is to focus on the opportunities to stretch and grow. 

In all of this, the 70/20/10 model reminds us that we each need an opportunity to reflect and build on the learning through connections. Provide people with the opportunity to connect and reflect on hardships and learning. Be there for your people as they are stretched beyond what they think they can do. If we do this, we will all emerge stronger and more capable. 

As I wrap things up and on a more personal note - how are you going? Can I encourage you that if you’re finding these current circumstances challenging and stressful then, congratulations, you’re a human being like the rest of us. Hopefully this episode reminds each of us of the opportunity to emerge stronger, and the need to support others through to the other side, whatever that might look like. Have a great week.

Reference

Putting Experience at the Center of Talent Management By: Joan Gurvis, Cindy McCauley, and Milynn Swofford. Center for Creative Leadership

https://cclinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/talentmanagement.e-1.pdf

Episode 84 - Ten Great Questions Leaders Ask

Summary

Being a great leader isn’t about having all the answers - it’s often about asking the right questions. This week we look at ten great questions leaders ask.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 84 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at ten great questions leaders ask.

One of the most significant societal and workplace shifts over the past two decades has been from answers to questions. Like many of you, I grew up before the internet. If I had a question about something, there was only a few options of where I could turn for answers. There was the school library which had, amongst other books, a complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. At home we had the more budget version - the World Book Encyclopaedia. In order to keep the encyclopaedias up to date, the publishers would send out a 'Year Book' update each year. That included little tabs that you could put in the relevant spots in the original encyclopaedia to point out that the information was now out of date, and which year book to refer to instead. 

Answers were difficult to find and expensive to access. Even simple things like finding out movie session times involved buying the newspaper or a phone call to the cinema. The relative cost of answers meant that you were very careful in the questions you asked, and relatively trusting in the material presented.

The internet changed everything. Firing up Netscape Navigator allowed information and answers from all over the world to suddenly be at our finger tips...if only we could find them. 

Services like Google helped to categorise content and make it searchable. Over the next few years answers suddenly became cheap. Now you don’t need to go to the library or buy the book, because chances are someone else has written the same content up online.  If you want to know the history of France, how birds fly or how to fix your washing machine, the internet is your one stop shop for information. Answers have become prevalent and cheap. It’s now the trustworthiness and quality of answers that varies.

Questions are the valuable commodity now. Perhaps they always have been, but even more so in this landslide of opinion and content. As leaders our role is less about providing answers, and more about helping people to ask the right questions. Great questions help people to discern between competing opinions in order to craft a way forward. As research has highlighted, questions build both liking and learning - they help to build connections and trust. Yet many of our educational institutions and workplaces still focus on rote learning and parroting back facts. 

So what are some great questions to ask? A quick search on Google revealed “350 Good Questions to Ask - The only list you'll need” followed by the next entry “253 Good Questions to Ask - The only list you'll need.” As tempting as it is to just copy and paste those posts in, instead here are 10 questions I have fond helpful that provoke, challenge and extend our thinking:

1. What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? There’s a reason why a SWOT analysis is still beneficial. It forces us to look outside at the upside and downside possibilities, while also considering our own capabilities. 

2. What does success look like? People work together more effectively when they’re clear about the end state they’re working towards.

3. What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? Sometimes we can be busy trying to solve something when we’re actually not clear about the problem. As a result we can end up working towards solving the wrong problem. Work with people to define a problem statement - episode 33 has more information on how to structure that.

4. Who else is involved or impacted? It’s easy for us to overlook the human element of situations, so always make an effort to consider who else should be involved.

5. What else could we try? We often stop at the first proposed solution but that’s rarely the best way forward. Instead, make sure you bring out as many options as possible.

6. How do you feel about this? We can underestimate the emotional element. Feelings matter and they impact our ability to make decisions. 

7. What’s getting in our way? Or What is likely to get in the way? It’s important to anticipate obstacles so we can plan options to push through or avoid them.

8. What progress have we made? Often we don’t spend enough time reflecting on the progress we have made. Taking time to reflect can help encourage us to keep going.

9. What support is available? We often underestimate the amount of support available to us. It’s important to consider the people and resources around that can be of assistance.

10. What will we do next? Help your people to move beyond conversation to action. I often encourage people to think about what they can do in the next 24 to 48 hours.

There will always be places on leadership teams for those who can ask the right questions. It turns out that a great question is as much about innovation as it is about information - it takes the conversation forward in a new direction. As leaders we need to focus less energy trying to have all the answers, and spend more time getting the questions right.

Well I hope that was helpful. I’ve brought together a range of our on demand resources into one place. This includes recordings of webinars on a range of leadership topics, and our Boost Your Assertiveness course. Each month I’ll add another webinar, and there will be an additional video course added each quarter. Just go to the leadership.today website and click on the on demand link to take a free 7 day trial. Have a great week.

Reference

The Surprising Power of Questions by Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John
Harvard Business Review, May–June 2018 Issue
https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions

Episode 83 - Turning Criticism into Feedback and Growth

Summary

It’s often easy to see feedback as criticism. As a result, we can be tempted to ignore it or react negatively. This week we look at turning criticism into feedback and growth.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 83 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at turning criticism into feedback and growth.

Very early in my career, my boss at the time called me into his office. While I can’t remember the exact words, I vividly remember the impact. In effect he said “Andrew - you’re smart and doing good work. But you can use your critical thinking to be very critical. Rather than just spotting what’s wrong, you would benefit from being more positive and trying to improve things yourself”. I remember feeling hurt, disappointed, upset, confronted and discouraged. And I remember reflecting in the coming days that he was absolutely right. It was amongst the most helpful feedback I have ever received. 

“I have some feedback for you” - be honest, what’s your immediate response to those words? What’s going on in your body? Are you feeling excited about someone giving you feedback? Probably not. More likely you are heading towards a threat response.

Our instinctive reaction is often to see feedback as criticism. But what is the difference between feedback and criticism? The difference is the perceived intent. If you think people are seeking to help you, it will feel like feedback. If you think people are seeking to hurt you, it will feel like criticism. It took me a few days, but I recognised that my boss was trying to help me. He saw potential in me, and astutely identified exactly what was holding me back. In fact over 20 years and numerous career moves later, that same ex-boss continues to provide excellent feedback and advice. I’m glad I was able to convert what I initially saw as criticism into feedback and growth.

As argued by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, feedback is often self-centred and poorly structured. Rather than bringing out the best in others, it’s often an attempt to transfer advice from one person to another. It’s better to think of feedback as an input in the development journey. Feedback isn’t about telling someone what to do, rather it’s about allowing them to see their impact more clearly so they can better align that with their intent. Often times the impact we have is vastly different to our intent.

Feedback is not always packaged well. As a result it can be tempting to just dismiss the feedback. On the receiving end it’s easy to think that it is just their perception of events. But their perception is also their reality. To us our perception IS our reality. It’s how we see the world. 

When we take on more of a growth mindset, we take feedback and even criticism as an opportunity to learn, grow and adapt. We look for the reality in the perception.

Here are five tips for receiving feedback, and five tips for providing feedback. 

On the receiving end of feedback:

1. Assume positive intent or, if you can’t do that, separate the feedback from the intent. People rarely provide feedback to hurt you, after all giving feedback is hard and risky. But even if you think the feedback is meant to hurt or limit you, change your perspective to see it as data. 

2. Seek further information. Ask the person for an example that relates to the feedback. This will help you to understand what you actually did and the impact it had. Help the person to make the impact you had even clearer. Make sure you express this as a desire to understand rather than to question their feedback.

3. Listen for the core of truth. Even if you’re unsure that the intent is positive, there’s probably some truth in the feedback. Sift through the feedback to find the truth.

4. Let the person providing the feedback know the impact their feedback has had upon you. Don’t let people guess at the impact. 

5. Seek further feedback. Even if it hurts and is hard, ask for and actively seek out additional feedback. It’s the best way to grow and change our impact.

And when we’re providing feedback:

1. Share your positive intent. Now, this isn’t about a feedback sandwich approach - it’s not about inserting negative feedback between two positive pieces of feedback. It’s about enveloping your feedback in positive intent. Ensure that people walk away knowing that you’re on their side and want to help them become even more effective.

2. Seek their perspective and response. Don’t just drop the feedback and walk away. It’s important to gain their perspective about the situation. 

3. Invite a follow up meeting. While you’ve planned to provide the feedback, they haven’t had that same chance. Make sure they do have an opportunity to think about that and have some additional time with you.

4. Dial up the positive feedback. We don’t provide enough positive feedback. Think of it like a bank account - the more positive and encouraging feedback you provide, the greater the balance you have to draw on when you need to provide more challenging feedback.

5. Model an appetite for feedback. It’s not reasonable to wander around throwing feedback at everyone if you’re not open to receiving feedback yourself. Actively seek out feedback about specific areas.

Each of us can help turn criticism into feedback and growth. I hope you found the content helpful today in doing exactly that. We run webinars on a pretty regular basis here at Leadership Today on a range of topics, and so on the website at leadership.today you will find a bunch of pre-recorded webinars that we’ve done and also an upcoming webinar that you can register for. I look forward to seeing you on one of those webinars and also to speaking with you again next week. Have a great week.

References

The Feedback Fallacy by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall
Harvard Business Review March–April 2019 
https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-feedback-fallacy

And a response to the article worth reading: https://hbr.org/2019/05/what-good-feedback-really-looks-like

Episode 82 - Five Ways to Avoid the Paranoia Associated with Uncertainty

Summary

When faced with unexpected negative outcomes, people tend to become more paranoid and attracted to conspiracy theories. This negatively impacts their ability to make sound, rational decisions. This week we look at five ways leaders can help overcome our tendency towards paranoia when faced with uncertainty.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 82 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at five ways leaders can help overcome our tendency towards paranoia when faced with uncertainty.

A firm I worked for was going through an acquisition. As part of the company being acquired, that meant moving to some beautiful new offices on a high floor overlooking gardens. We had only just moved in when there was the first of many morning teas to celebrate birthdays in the office. As we made our way into the open kitchen area I could not believe the amount of food. There wasn’t just the traditional birthday cake, but also sushi, sandwiches, spring rolls and pastries filling the large table. Just before the speech began, I heard a low voice next to me say “Hey - you’re one of the new guys, yeah? So here’s the deal - make sure you take as much food as you can - maybe for lunch or to take home. Otherwise if there’s food left over the management will cut back on how much they order next time”. Sure enough, once we finished singing happy birthday, people were making their way back to their desks with loaded plates and containers full of food - more than enough to cover their lunch if not another meal on top of that. To me it looked like a somewhat overly generous way to celebrate staff and bring people together. But for the paranoid whisperer, the birthday celebrations had become just another way that the leaders were scheming to take something away from the workers. The acquisition provided fertile ground for all sorts of conspiracy theories and paranoia.

How prevalent is paranoia? One study showed 20% of people believe that someone was against them at some time during the last year. 8% of the population believe others are actively out to harm them.

In a work context, I’ve lost count of how many times people have said “the management” or some other elusive group were out to get them. There have been accusations of sabotage, stealing clients, or other teams intentionally making things hard out of spite. All of this resulted in cultures driven by blame, fear and even revenge.

Research demonstrates that paranoia is a predictable response to uncertainty and unexpected change. As human beings we try to make sense of negative and unexpected events, and often that involves finding someone to blame. Blaming others helps us to explain and make sense of events, even if the conspiracy theory we put together seems a little strange to others.

In one study researchers measured people’s levels of paranoia and then had them play a card game where the chances of winning were manipulated during the game. Those with greater levels of paranoia tended not to learn from the outcomes in the game, expecting even higher levels of volatility than was present. High levels of paranoia decreased effectiveness. They made decisions and choices that weren’t based on the experience of playing the game, but rather based on their perceptions of the person leading the game. As the experimenters increased the level of uncertainty, even the initially low paranoia participants started acting like those with high paranoia. Their learning also decreased and they became far less effective. When uncertainty was high decisions were based far more on their expectations than on real-time experience.

Now I can guess what you’re thinking - when bad things are happening to you, surely it’s natural to feel paranoid. But in an earlier study, researchers found that even when just observing a similar game people were inclined to become paranoid towards the person running the game as the uncertainty increased. You don’t have to be on the receiving end of the negative outcome to become paranoid.

As the the author of Catch-22 Joseph Heller said, “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.” However, we often see ourselves as being in the spotlight - as if we are the main actor in a performance revolving around us. It’s easy to then think that if something unexpectedly bad happens, that someone around us is pulling the strings. We can become hyper-attuned to others as a source of risk, particularly if we don’t know them well. But if you have to choose between conspiracy and a misunderstanding, go with the misunderstanding every time. People aren’t very good at conspiracies.

So what can we do about all of this? As a leader when the unexpected happens:

1. Create meaning even if you can’t explain everything. Part of your role as leader is as meaning-maker. What do these events mean for the team and for individuals?

2. Find the predictable. Grab a hold of what you can control, and encourage your team to do the same. This helps to increase the level of certainty within your team.

3. Talk about the risk of paranoia and conspiracy theories. You might even share this research so people can manage the risk of conspiracy theories and pull themselves up when they see themselves falling into that trap.

4. Challenge interpretations of negative intent. Help people to steer away from assuming others are out to get them, and explore other potential reasons that might be driving their behaviour.

5. Connect people. It’s much harder to think those you personally know well are conspirators against you. Help your team to understand their world and the pressures they are facing, then identify ways you can support each other.

Paranoia is a natural response to uncertain times, but that doesn’t mean we have to put up with it. I hope these ideas will help you to steer your team through challenging times, bringing people together rather than driving them apart.

As always I’ve provided details of the research used in this episode in the show notes. And just before you continue on with your day, why not make sure you’ve hit the subscribe button and provided a rating for the podcast. That will help you and others to find future episodes. Have a great week.

References

Erin J Reed, Stefan Uddenberg, Praveen Suthaharan, Christoph D Mathys, Jane R Taylor, Stephanie Mary Groman, Philip R Corlett. Paranoia as a deficit in non-social belief updating. eLife, 2020; 9 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.56345

Raihani, N.J., Bell, V. Paranoia and the social representation of others: a large-scale game theory approach. Sci Rep 7, 4544 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-04805-3

Episode 81 - Inspiring Others from the Outside In

Summary

The objective of leadership is aligned motivation. When we inspire people from the outside in we build a team that contributes because they want to, rather than because they have to.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 81 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at inspiring others from the outside in.

The objective of leadership is aligned motivation. As leaders we want a group of people who aren’t just motivated, but are motivated towards the same vision and objectives. There’s no point in having a group of motivated people who are headed in different directions. It’s not much better to have a group of people who know exactly where they are headed, but lack the motivation and drive to get there. As leaders we need to align the motivation of our people.

But how do we achieve this? Do we just need to hire people who are already on board with where we are headed as an organisation? And then what happens when the direction changes? How do we move people towards a new vision and direction? That’s where understanding human motivation can be really helpful.

I’ve referred to the work of Deci and Ryan before. It’s fair to say that they have done more to build our modern understanding of motivation than any other researchers. Deci and Ryan suggest that we often think about motivation as a single thing - that motivation varies just in amount. As a result we then try to work out how to make a person more motivated to do something we want, or less motivated to do something we don’t want. Their work demonstrates that it’s more helpful and accurate to think about types of motivation.

The first distinction they make is between autonomous and controlled motivation. With autonomous motivation I’m doing something with a sense of willingness, volition and choice. I’m undertaking the action or completing the work because I enjoy doing it, and I find it interesting and personally valuable. It’s likely the work aligns with my values and interests. With autonomous motivation I do it because I want to.

With controlled motivation I’m doing something to gain a reward or to avoid punishment. I’m completing the work because I feel pressured, demanded or obliged. With controlled motivation I do it because I have to (or at least I feel like I have to).

Not surprisingly, Deci and Ryan found that autonomous motivation is much better for performance, creativity, problem solving, well-being and engagement. Having freedom and autonomy is a basic human need. We’re much better off as human beings when we have autonomy and freedom.

When we think about autonomous motivation, we typically think about it in terms of intrinsic motivation - that it’s something inside of us. Here we are doing the activity or work because we personally find it interesting and enjoyable, and not just because someone told us to do it. So it’s easy to think of intrinsic motivation as ‘good’. People then contrast that with extrinsic motivation, where we are doing an activity in order to get something else. That ‘something else’ might be a financial outcome, the praise and approval of others, or a good grade. Therefore many people lump all types of extrinsic motivation into the ‘bad’ category.

However, Deci and Ryan found that people could internalise extrinsic motivation in a way where they own it as their own. Over time a person could come to understand the inherent value of the activity and integrate it into who they are. The extrinsic element could be an idea or a concept such as a team purpose. If I come to identify with that purpose, I can eventually own the purpose as my own. At that point I have become autonomously motivated. I’ve taken the extrinsic idea and made it an intrinsic purpose. The leader who has helped me to do that has aligned my motivation. At that point I’m not doing it because you told me to do it, rather I’m doing it because I want to do it.

It’s perhaps a subtle difference, but our job as leaders isn’t to motivate people, but rather to inspire them. When we inspire someone we are sparking their motivation towards a particular direction. That’s different to thinking we can somehow impart motivation onto others, or force them to be motivated. This change in mindset helps us to understand that aligned motivation is about inspiring people. As Deci puts it, it’s not about focusing on how we can motivate others, but rather how we can set up the conditions where people can motivate themselves.

So how do we go about inspiring people from the outside in?

1. Understand what motivates our people. We take the time to uncover what connects people to the work, and what motivates them outside of work. We need to understand their perspective and interests. That takes time - there aren’t any short cuts.

2. Communicate a compelling vision. We take our plans and shape them into a vision that is clear, concise and memorable. It’s an influencing exercise. We need to approach it the same way we would try to sell someone a new product or service. It’s an upfront investment that will pay dividends later.

3. Align individuals to the vision. We work with each individual to help explain the vision and why it matters in a way that is aligned with their interests. We allow our people to make the choice to engage.

4. Define roles in the context of the vision. We take the time to ensure all the work we undertake links back to the vision.

This helps to explain why the ‘me too’ and ‘black lives matter’ movements have been so successful in engaging a broader group of people where other approaches have had limited success. By way of illustration, both movements have allowed me as a white male to see my role in being part of the solution. So even though I haven’t been on the receiving end of sexism, exploitation, racism or abuse in any significant way, I have been able to align my motivation with those who have. The countless leaders in both movements haven’t motivated me, rather they have set out the conditions that allow me to understand their perspective and how that aligns with my own, and then demonstrated how I can support and help. That’s a very different approach to telling me I have to change, even though clearly I have unwittingly benefited from being on the better end of the equation for years. Rather the leaders have inspired me by drawing out my personal values of fairness and equality, and by encouraging me to take action. And that’s what great leadership looks like.

When we inspire people from the outside in we align their motivation, building a team that contributes because they want to, rather than because they have to. Great leaders take the time to listen and understand first.

I hope you found that episode helpful. In the show notes I’ve included links to a couple of videos with Edward Deci explaining Self-Determination Theory in more detail.

References

Two videos featuring Edward Deci explaining Self Determination Theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fm1gt5YAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGrcets0E6I

Episode 80 - The Surprising Benefits of Doing Good

Summary

We would all hope that going good for others helps to create more positive work places. Recent research highlights the contagious nature of kind acts at work.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 80 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the surprising benefits of doing good.

We would all hope that doing good for others helps to create more positive workplaces. But doing good can become scarce when people are under pressure. 

Let’s start with the flip side to doing good. In episode 62 I shared Christine Porath’s work on incivility in the workplace highlighting the negative impact on work effort, quality and performance which also tends to flow on to treatment of customers.  Whether it’s losing your temper, being rude, withholding information, running down someone’s reputation, or sabotaging a piece of work, it’s easy to see how incivility is so damaging in the workplace. So organisations have made a real effort to reduce these sorts of negative behaviours.

All those efforts, at best, take us back to a neutral position where people aren’t being actively negative towards others. But it’s really difficult to be neutral towards other people. We tend to be either positive or negative in our impact during our interactions with those around us.

Each of the world’s major religions have a variation of the golden rule - treat others as you would like them to treat you. In Judaism it’s expressed as loving your neighbour as yourself, words that Jesus restates during the early foundations of Christianity. From that perspective, the golden rule is not just a minimum standard, but a call to be kind and good to others.

I know you’re already thanking me for the first year philosophy and ethics lecture so let’s take a deeper look at the research around doing good at work, or what researchers typically call pro-social behaviour.

A just released research review from The University of Texas demonstrates that cooperative behaviour is contagious. When people see someone perform an act of kindness, they in turn are more likely to be kind. And the effect wasn’t just about being on the receiving end of the positive act. In fact, the motivation to be kind was strongest when the kind act was witnessed, rather than when it was personally received. That’s right - you’re more likely to be kind to others when you see someone being kind, rather than being on the receiving end of kindness.

Another study undertaken in the workplace included participants who were asked to perform acts of kindness for their colleagues. The impact of these kind actions were noticed by others, leading to greater perceived levels of autonomy and higher ratings of happiness. The study even found the old adage to be true - that it’s better to give than receive. Those undertaking acts of kindness rated their life satisfaction and job satisfaction higher a full month after the intervention finished. Those on the receiving end of kind acts also tended to pay that kindness forward to others.

So the research is pretty clear - if you want to increase the amount of good in your workplace, share examples of people being good towards others. This role-modelling is particularly powerful when it comes from leaders. In a large organisation where I used to work, there was an executive elevator that ran express from the executive car park up to the executive floor. The most senior people could make their way through an entire day without ever seeing anyone that wasn’t an executive. The CEO at the time made a conscious effort to take the elevator from the car park to the ground floor, get out, and then catch the regular elevator with everyone else. He would ask for people’s names and engage in conversation. That simple act probably cost him 10 minutes a day, but it role-modelled that under his leadership anyone could talk to anyone. The message was clear - if the CEO makes an effort to engage with frontline staff, then maybe I should do the same.

So what can you do as a leader to boost the amount of good in your workplace? Here are some ideas:

1. Be kind to others - it will benefit them and you, and it is also likely to be contagious

2. Recruit others to also be kind to others - find some peers who are willing to join you in doing good

3. Share examples of kind acts - this will motivate others to be kind themselves

As always, I hope you found this episode helpful. Can you believe it, we’re up to episode 80 so remember we’ve got a whole back catalogue of research and advice in episodes like this. Just go to the leadership.today website to track those down. I look forward to speaking with you again next week.

References

Haesung Jung, Eunjin Seo, Eunjoo Han, Marlone D. Henderson, Erika A. Patall. Prosocial modeling: A meta-analytic review and synthesis.. Psychological Bulletin, 2020; DOI: 10.1037/bul0000235

Chancellor, J., Margolis, S., Jacobs Bao, K., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2018). Everyday prosociality in the workplace: The reinforcing benefits of giving, getting, and glimpsing. Emotion, 18(4), 507–517. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000321

Episode 79 - Five Ways to Make the Workplace More Fun

Summary

If you think back over the best workplaces you’ve been a part of, fun was probably a key element. However, the fun was likely to have felt quite natural rather than forced. This week we look at five ways to make the workplace more fun.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 79 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at five ways to make the workplace more fun.

If you think back over the best workplaces you’ve been a part of, fun was probably a key element. However, the fun was likely to have felt quite natural rather than forced. And, in those examples, the fun probably helped rather than hindered productivity.

When times are challenging, our instinct might be to steer away from an enjoyable and light-hearted approach to work. However it is still possible to take the work and results seriously, while also being less serious about the way we deliver.

Research indicates a number of benefits in having fun workplaces:

• Attracting and retaining staff

• Engagement

• Positive mood and emotions

• Increased job satisfaction

• Increased organisational commitment

• Reduced emotional exhaustion - fun actually buffered employees against the otherwise taxing parts of their role

However building a sense of fun can be tricky to achieve. There’s a fine line between real fun and forced fun.

In a business where I used to work, we had an annual Work Christmas party. This usually included lunch at a nice restaurant and some fun activities. However one year we decided to have a dinner instead. Given it was at night instead of during the day, one team member asked if the Christmas party was compulsory and whether they would be paid to attend. I thought they were joking. They weren’t. It turns out that not all fun is created equal. What one person loves, another despises.

What we are aiming for is fun with a point. It’s not fun for it’s own sake. And that’s where the research can help.

One study focused on four different dimensions of workplace fun and the impact on the level of connection people felt with their organisation. The findings of their study highlighted that not all fun is created equal. They found the following in order of effectiveness:

1. Fun job responsibilities - fun worked best when it was baked into the job itself

2. Coworker socialising - fun with colleagues is great and doesn’t need to be formal

3. Manager support for fun - it helps if your manager actually supports fun in the workplace - again that was quite positive

4. Formal fun activities - when we try to add fun to work as an additional activity it is far less effective

The key is to make core elements of the work itself more fun. It’s not about adding fun to work (although that still doesn’t hurt), it’s about making the work more fun.

Here are five things we can try as leaders:

1. It starts by asking a simple question - What do people enjoy doing? Why not ask your team how they think you could make the work more fun? You might be surprised at what people come up with. A team I managed introduced a scoreboard to track their productivity across the day including a mini presentation ceremony. That worked really well for a few weeks to lighten up an otherwise administratively-heavy task.

2. Provide meaningful core responsibilities. Even mundane tasks can become positive if we can help people to find enjoyment and satisfaction. Link the task to the broader purpose. Work with people to align the work to their interests.

3. Introduce variety - that might include job rotations, special projects, or opportunities for people to innovate. People love an opportunity to try new things.

4. See enjoyment as something important to factor in when crafting the job. Give people as much freedom as possible over when and how they complete their work.

5. Change your mindset about fun. It’s easy to see fun as a waste of time. However, a group of people laughing together can help to build connections, engagement and productivity.

The research clearly shows us that fun with a point can make a great contribution to our workplaces. Why not work with your team this week to get creative and lighten things up?

Research

Michael J. Tews John Michel Shi Xu Alex J. Drost , (2015),"Workplace fun matters … but what else?", Employee Relations, Vol. 37 Iss 2 pp. 248 - 267

Episode 78 - The Four Best Ways to Learn at Work

Summary

When have you learned the most at work? I bet it wasn’t sitting in a training course. In this week’s podcast we look at the four best ways to learn at work.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 78 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the four best ways to learn at work.

When have you learned the most at work? Was it sitting in a training course? Probably not. We usually learn best through stretching assignments where we are placed outside our comfort zone, with a supportive leader and team around us. We often try to add learning to work. However it is far better to learn through our work.

Charles Jennings has long championed this approach to learning. He believes we should focus on extracting learning from the work we do, rather than adding learning on top of our work. We should therefore focus more on performance metrics rather than learning metrics. Our performance is the key measure of our learning. We have learned something new when we can demonstrate it, not when we can restate it. And that learning should flow through to our performance on the job. 

Charles outlines four drivers of learning. Let’s step through each of those in turn, along with some practical examples.

The first driver of learning is exposure to rich and challenging experiences. As leaders we need to delegate important and challenging work to our people. From a development perspective, we can’t wait until we’re 100% confident that someone can deliver before we delegate. People learn through opportunities to be stretched. Delegation is not about short-term efficiency. Whenever you delegate, there is always going to be a short-term drop in performance. The key is to provide support and encouragement to help people push through the discomfort of learning. 

The second driver of learning Charles Jennings identifies is the opportunity to practice. To learn, we need some freedom to experiment and try things out. We recently shifted a face-to-face leadership program to an online format. The facilitation team had varying levels of experience and comfort in delivering online. Most, including me, had never delivered a multiple day program in this way. So part of the learning process was to practice and experiment with the platform. We encouraged people to use the platform to catch up with family and friends - to just play with the technology in a real setting. That meant the occasional drop out and technical issue, but it’s much better to have those in a practice session than during the real thing. No amount of online how-to videos could have equated to the learning of actually practicing using the platform.

The third driver of learning is participation in rich conversations and networks. It is really important to have people to share ideas and feedback with. I have always sought to be part of small groups of people for the purposes of learning. As a leader I encourage you to connect people together from across the organisation to form learning groups. Such peer learning opportunities are really powerful as people have the chance to coach and learn from each other with a focus on real work.

The fourth driver is spaces for reflection. In order to maximise our learning we need time to reflect while we are working, and time away from the work to reflect as well. Let’s be honest - no one is going to mandate or schedule that reflection time for you. You need to set aside time yourself to reflect. But you can encourage your team members to spend time reflecting. It’s great to ask people about what they can do now that they couldn’t do a month ago. That will encourage people to reflect back on just how much they have learned. Without reflection, we often miss the opportunity to consolidate what we have learned.

These past few months have been a massive opportunity to learn through our work. With millions of people thrown into working remotely, we’ve all had to learn on the run. That might have included figuring out how to unmute ourselves on Zoom, or how to structure our days when working from home, or working out how to lead people remotely. To make the most of this globally enforced learning opportunity, it’s important to continue to stretch ourselves, to practice, to discuss what we’re learning with others, and to take the time to reflect on what we have learned. And, as leaders, we need to encourage and support out people to do the same. That way we will emerge with even greater capability and capacity as individuals and organisations. 

Reference

Charles Jennings - The Four Ways Adults Learn : Learning Technologies 2013 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0ItF1s9O9Y

Episode 77 - Can I Make Myself More Creative?

Summary

In a world that’s unpredictable, creativity is more important than ever. But we often treat creativity like it’s an inherited skill - something you’re either born with, or not.  Does that then rule us non-creative types out? Or can we make ourselves more creative?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 77 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore ways to make ourselves and our teams more creative.

In a world that’s unpredictable, creativity is more important than ever. But we often treat creativity like it’s an inherited skill - something you’re either born with, or not.  Does that then rule us non-creative types out? Or can we make ourselves more creative? While the field of creativity research is a bit of a mess of conflicting models and ideas, most research supports that people can make themselves more creative.  So how do we do that?

Well, first of all, let’s define creativity. Creativity is about producing something genuinely new, even if we eventually take that new thing for granted.

A great example is the development of the first iPhone. The iPhone was announced in January 2007, and launched later that same year. It’s worth watching a recording of the launch and I’ve provided a link as a reference in the show notes. In the video, Steve Jobs takes to the stage and announces that Apple is launching three revolutionary products - a widescreen iPod with touch controls (and there’s some enthusiastic cheering), a revolutionary mobile phone (louder cheers), and the third a breakthrough internet communication device (muted cheers). He then keeps repeating “an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator” and then asks “Are you getting it?” He then blows people away by saying “These are not three devices, these are one device”. When he demonstrates the multi-touch screen by using his finger to scroll through a list of songs, people in the audience gasp. In a world where all smart phones had keyboards and extremely convoluted software, the iPhone was something completely out of the box. But now we take all those revolutionary features for granted. Now every smart phone looks pretty much the same as the next.

All of this plays to the narrative that people like Steve Jobs are the exception. Surely they are creative geniuses from birth and mere mortals like us could never be that creative and smart. And we often equate being creative with being smart. But being creative can also be about being unrestrained, and that is something research suggests we can learn and develop,

For example, research was conducted with jazz musicians with varying levels of experience. After they had warmed up, each musician was asked to improvise over a pre-recorded track as they “normally would in a jazz setting”. This was the baseline. They were then given three more tries, but told they should “improvise even more creatively than your past performance”. Those with less experience did markedly better when consciously deciding to be more creative. For the musicians the key was actually about less effort and worrying less about judgement, both their own and others’.

Daniel Kahneman talks about two ways of thinking in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow - system 1 and system 2. Neither system is perfect, and both are necessary.

System 1 - thinking fast - is fast, automatic, emotional, unconscious, and biased. System 2 - thinking slow - is conscious, effortful, logical, and calculating. One of his arguments is that we think of ourselves in terms of system 2, but the reality is we can never turn off system 1. Creativity involves using both of these systems to make the most of our experience and intuition.

Here are five tips for being more creative, whether it’s individually or leading a team:

1. Decide when you are going to be creative. If you’re working with others, let them know that’s what you’re doing. That will give you and others permission to be more loose on logic.

2. Pose provocative questions, What if? Here you want to beg, borrow and steal from other business models like Uber, AirBnB or Netflix.  You can take any business model and think about how that might apply to your business or product. 

3. Free yourself from constraints. We are focusing here on the volume of ideas. Judging the merits will be relatively easy - we’re all experienced at punching holes in ideas. So take the time to ditch fear and judgement. 

4. Pay attention in the shower. Our best ideas rarely emerge through conscious effort, but rather when we are relaxed. Creativity is as much about letting your mind wander as it is about focused problem solving.

5. Decide when to be practical. All that creativity is worthless if you don’t apply it. Again, if you’re working with others let them know that’s what you’re doing. It’s time to critique the ideas and put together a road map.

So we can all be more creative through a combination of effort and intuition. Why not explore creativity with your team this week

And just a reminder that I do have some more webinars coming up. You can go to the Leadership.Today website to find those, and I’ve also included recordings of some of the previous webinars.

You’ll also find details of our online facilitated workshops including Well-Being For Leaders and The Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership. We can run those with your teams. They’re around an hour each, and we can run that with any number up to 100 participants. 

Anyway, I hope you have a great week and I’m looking forward to reconnecting with you again next week.

References

Rosen, D. S., Kim, Y. E., Mirman, D., & Kounios, J. (2017). All you need to do is ask? The exhortation to be creative improves creative performance more for nonexpert than expert jazz musicians. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(4), 420–427.

iPhone launch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGoM_wVrwng

Episode 76 - Pause Before You Pivot

Summary

It seems like everyone is being encouraged to pivot - to try something completely new in order to maintain your job or business. But it’s important to pause before you pivot and consider four Cs - Capability, Content, Channel and Call.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 76 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we look at the need to pause before we pivot, and consider four Cs - Capability, Content, Channel and Call.

There’s a lot of focus at the moment on the need for organisations and individuals to pivot. That we need to look for something new to do rather than sticking with old approaches. That being agile and nimble is essential to survival in rapidly changing circumstances.

Research by LinkedIn highlights the tension for individuals, showing 22% of people feel like they’ve just fallen into their job without much planning, and 23% are feeling like they are on a treadmill going nowhere. Why not give something completely different a try?

While I absolutely agree with the sentiment behind this, it’s important to pause before you pivot. Yes, there are new opportunities emerging every day, but the answer isn’t to mindlessly change what we’re doing and hope for the best. We can bring a far more considered and systematic approach.

LinkedIn and other social media feels like a giant experiment at the moment, with people and organisations throwing forth seemingly random ideas and offers in an attempt to find a solid foothold. Much of it is driven by a genuine desire to be helpful, or at least needed. And much of it will ultimately fail. There’s just not enough substance behind many of these pivots.

It’s helpful to think of the need and capacity to pivot in terms of four Cs - Capability, Content, Channel and Call. I know this sounds like I’ve pivoted overnight to a podcast on marketing, but we can think of these four Cs for ourselves and our organisations when considering whether to pivot, and where to pivot.

For any organisation or individual, we bring value to the world via our Capability and Content delivered through a Channel. We then receive value back based on whether there is a Call or demand for what we bring.

You can think of Capability as the skills and abilities that we bring to bear. There are things that we can do that are potentially of value to others. And we can always develop our Capability through the investment of time and effort.

Content is what we know. It’s the knowledge that we’ve acquired over time. It’s our views and perspectives about different areas. We can always build more Content.

Then there is the Channel. If you think about this from a marketing perspective, a Channel is how you connect and communicate with others. In the context of making a pivot, a Channel is how you bring your Capability and Content to the market. That might be a job, or a voluntary role, or a business, or a blog. It’s the conduit between you and the outside world.

The final and perhaps most important area is Call. Here I’m talking about the market demand. If you’re looking to remain employed or in business, the Call will be mainly financial - how you can bring value that warrants the amount you are paid. But even if you’re doing something in a voluntary capacity, there still needs to be a Call for what you’re offering. When considering Call the key question is “what do people want or need?”

A risky pivot is to try to change in multiple areas simultaneously. For example, to do something outside of our Capability, with new Content, through a new Channel, without a clear sense of the Call. We are much better at any point in time to pivot in one or two areas, rather than all four.

We do want to experiment, but think of a minimum viable product based on a clear Call. Start by thinking about what people need - clarify the Call. Then, rather than working away at something that requires a huge investment, why not test a smaller version of that first? I hate the term, but it might be a side-hustle alongside your paid employment. Or it could be a new service or product for your business.

I’ll provide an example from my own business. At Leadership Today our mission is to help leaders to achieve results through people for good. That’s why we exist. The mission hasn’t really changed in the past 8 years, but it has been refined and clarified.

When I speak with clients, the Call I’m hearing around leadership development at the moment is in two areas - well-being and remote leadership. How do leaders look after themselves and others in a broad definition of well-being? And how do leaders lead teams that are physically distanced and isolated? There is an ongoing Call for leadership development that aligns with the mission of my organisation, but these two areas are most pressing.

If I think about those two leadership development needs in terms of Content, there’s a lot I know about leadership in both of those areas. But there’s always more I can learn, so I’ve been spending some time increasing my Content knowledge.

In terms of Channels, up to last year I had been primarily using this podcast and face-to-face leadership development programs to deliver my Capability and Content to the market. But even before the pandemic, I saw that the vast majority of people who listen to this podcast are outside of my home country of Australia, so I was already looking at ways to deliver what I know (the Content) to people where face-to-face would not always be possible (the Channel). So, for me, I had already identified webinars, online workshops, and online courses make a lot of sense in linking the Content to the people who want it (the Call). The pandemic has just increased the Call.

It’s then that Capability comes to the fore. So I can record podcasts, but I also have experience in recording video for leadership development programs, and also in hosting webinars and online web conferences. Perfect - I’m pretty much ready to go from a Capability perspective.

Taken together, the Call is slightly refined, the Capability is pretty much there, the Content just needs tweaking - it’s the Channel that’s the greatest change. So that’s a pivot mainly in one area - totally do-able. And I can try it out with some low risk experiments and learn quickly to refine the Channel.

At this point you might be saying, “that’s great for you Andrew and I’m glad your business is going well, but I’m in a job or looking for new work”.

Let’s take the example of someone who has recently lost their job. It might be tempting for them to either try and find exactly the same job but in another organisation, or go completely to the other end of the spectrum and try something entirely different. The best answer is likely in between these two extremes.

You can think of the job as the Channel - it’s the way you deliver your Capability and Content to the market, the market being your organisation. I think we often underestimate the breadth of Channels or jobs across which we could bring our skills and knowledge to life. We also routinely underestimate our Capability and Content. But we also need to recognise the market demand - the Call.

Let’s say I’m a flight attendant and I’m out of work as the number of flights occurring has dropped dramatically. It might be tempting for me to try to find the same job somewhere else - to keep the same Channel and try to join a new airline as a flight attendant. But the Call has dropped dramatically globally. So then I should invest my time thinking about the Channel and the Call. Where are my skills and capabilities in demand? Sure, I could also rush off and do a course in something completely different - I could focus on Capability and Content. But then I’m looking at Capability, Content, Channel and Call at the same time. That’s not impossible, but it is risky. It would have been safer to develop my Capability and Content while I was also safely employed.

One final example. I was recently looking for a laptop stand and couldn’t find one anywhere due to the sudden increase in people working and schooling from home. Everyone was out of stock with future deliveries nowhere in sight. I stumbled across a great Australian business called Stagekings. They were, until recently, focused on making staging for concerts and performances. Clearly, that work has dried up during the pandemic - the Channel and Call had both evaporated. They were facing the prospect of closing down and laying off staff until things returned to normal, whenever that might be. So they looked at their Capability and what the market needed, the Call. They saw the huge demand for desks, monitor stands and laptop stands. They connected this to their Capability to manufacture plywood structures using a commercial router, and started making exactly what people needed - easy to ship and assemble desks and related products. Sure, that meant they needed to develop some new Capability and Content, but those areas were less of a stretch. It turns out making a monitor stand isn’t that different to making a stage. They now have their original team busier than ever, have hired more people, and are even using event crew to drive delivery trucks. On top of all of that, they donate money towards supporting out of work people in the event industry. So, for them it was the perfect pivot.

It’s tempting for me to look at their business and think “why didn’t I think of that?”. But, even if I recognised the Call, I lacked in the other three areas of Capability, Content and Channel. Pivoting from leadership development to desk manufacturing would have been way too big a pivot. But pivoting from stage construction to desk construction is less of a stretch. Still challenging, but ultimately successful. If you’re in Australia, go to stagekings.com.au and check them out.

So, yes, I absolutely encourage you to think about a pivot. Just ensure you’re keeping in mind the four C’s - Capability, Content, Channel and Call. Try not to make radical shifts in more than two at once. And don’t underestimate how much value you already have to bring.

Just a quick reminder that I have a free webinar coming up on the morning of the 8th May in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, or the afternoon and evening of the 7th May in the US. The topic is “The Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders”. You can register at leadership.today - just look for the link on the homepage. I’ll make sure the next webinar is at a decent hour for my European audience, but you can also check out previous recorded webinars at our website.

Also, I’m running a number of online workshops for clients around topics including Well-Being for Leaders and The Six Daily Practices of Remote Leadership. They’re interactive and just an hour long. We’re getting great feedback about the research-based content, practical tips and facilitation approach. Send me a message via the website if you’re interested in having me run an online workshop with your organisation. Have a great week.

Reference

Blair Heitmann (2018) Nearly a Third of U.S. Professionals Are Career Sleepwalking: A Career Pivot Could Be Your Wake Up Call. LinkedIn Official Blog

https://blog.linkedin.com/2018/august/15/nearly-a-third-of-u-s-professionals-are-career-sleepwalking-career-pivot

Episode 75 - Four Ways to Build Hope

Summary

“Hope” can sound just like wishful thinking. But at the heart of true hope is driven initiative. This week we explore four research-backed ways to build hope.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 75 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore four research-backed ways to build hope. “Hope” can sound just like wishful thinking. But at the heart of true hope is driven initiative. 

The concept of hope captures the human imagination. We see it reflected in popular quotes.

Martin Luther said “Everything that is done in this world is done by hope”. His namesake, Martin Luther King Jnr said “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”.

We’re encouraged to live a life focused on hope not fear. As Nelson Mandela said “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears”. 

But it’s easy to see hope as just wishful thinking. We might even accuse people of having false hope - of being unrealistic in their optimism.

The reality in life is that we are constantly barraged by opportunities and threats. Our brain is wired for survival and will always tend towards the threats. That’s why we are so amazed by stories like that of Nelson Mandela - someone whose life circumstance while in prison suggested there should be no hope, and yet he held onto a sense of hope and purpose even through tough circumstances. Indeed, this hope drove and strengthened him.

From a psychological perspective, those who research hope focus on two components:

• The first component is Pathways - one element of hope is thinking about routes to achieve desired goals. Those with hope dream a dream, but a practical dream. For those with hope there’s a belief that they will find a way forward - that there’s always a pathway.

• The second component is Agency - that’s having the motivation to follow these pathways. Those with hope are willing to put in the work. Agency is the belief that we can initiate and sustain action towards our goals.

The researchers find a raft of benefits from those who demonstrate these two components of hope, ranging from improved academic performance, physical health, and mental health. The research shows that Agency, in particular, really matters. Agency, that drive and motivation to keep going, is linked with later decreased demonstration of both anxiety and depression.

If you use this two part definition of hope, the researchers argue that you avoid “false hope” altogether. Having a goal, a plan, and the drive to get there is far from false hope.

Those with hope are confident they will find a way through challenge. They are also confident in their drive to pursue goals. So it’s not just trying to smash through obstacles by sheer effort. Often hope is about having confidence that you will be able to find a way around an obstacle, or perhaps develop a new goal in the process.

You can think of hope as driven initiative. Agency is the drive element , and Pathways is the initiative element. 

If I think about the TV shows and movies that appealed to me when I was younger, they featured characters who exemplified this definition of hope. I may be showing my age, but the original 1980’s TV series MacGyver comes to mind. The back story of Angus MacGyver, the main character, was always a little vague. He had a military special forces background but also an education in physics. But he was a case study in hope. Every week he overcame extraordinary odds, often by fashioning some solution out of everyday objects. 

I recall one episode where MacGyver was escaping an angry group of mercenaries in a hot air balloon when one of them shot a hole in the side of the balloon. MacGyver initially looks worried as he stares up at the gaping hole and the balloon starts to descend. But then we see, moments later, that he has somehow duct taped a map to the outside of the balloon to stop it from deflating. Cue a big smile from MacGyver and roll the credits. I remember being slightly annoyed that he taped the map to the outside of the balloon, when taping it on the inside would have worked much better. And they never did show how he made his way halfway up the outside of a hot air balloon. But, despite those nit picky details, MacGyver was a picture of hope. He was always willing to put in the work. And he was always willing to look at new pathways to get to his goal. 

Being filled with hope is a mindset you can develop. We can train ourselves to look for the hope in a situation or beyond a situation. And we can build hope in others as well. If you’ve worked for leaders with hope you will have seen just how positively it shaped the culture of your team and organisation.

As a leader we can build hope in four ways:

1. Helping people to see not just the threats but also the opportunities. The great leaders I have had a chance to work for and alongside have helped me to always seek out the opportunities in even the darkest times. So when something goes bad, I now demonstrate greater hope by looking for opportunities that others might miss.

2. Encouraging people to explore multiple pathways to the goal. We often develop just one plan and then get frustrated when it doesn’t work. Hope is as much about finding a way around as it is about finding a way through. It’s an overused word, but those with hope are agile in their thinking. They hold onto their plans loosely so they can find another way to the goal if needed.

3. Sharing progress. Part of maintaining motivation is measuring and communicating the progress that is being made. We can be in such a rush that we fail to look back at our progress. Looking back helps us to see that we can indeed move forward and we can find a way.

4. Recognising effort. Notice when people are putting in the work and persisting in the face of obstacles. We want to encourage this drive to achieve.

Our world and workplaces can really do with more hope. My challenge to you is to not just build hope for yourself, but also build hope in others.

I hope you found that helpful. I have a free webinar coming up on the morning of the 8th May in Australia, Zealand and Singapore, or the afternoon and evening of the 7th May in the US. The topic is “The Six Daily Practices of Outstanding Leaders”. Given the webinar kicks off at 10am Melbourne time, that will be the middle of the night for those in the UK and some other parts of the world, but it will be recorded. You can register at leadership.today - just look for the link on the homepage. 

I’ve also put up two new recorded webinars. A 20 minute webinar on Rethinking Assertiveness, and a 30 minute webinar called Increase Your Influence.

One final thing before I go. We’re up to 75 episodes of the podcast, and I genuinely see this as a way of helping leaders to achieve results through people for good. If that sounds like a cause you want to support, please let a few friends or colleagues know about the podcast and, for bonus points, provide a rating or review for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Thanks for your support and have a great week.

References

Snyder, C. R., Rand, K., King, E., Feldman, D., & Woodward, J. T. (2002). “False” hope. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 58(9), 1003–1022. doi: 10.1002/jclp.10096.

Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry, 13(4), 249-275.

Episode 74 - Train to Retain

Summary

This week we explore whether investing in people’s development makes them more likely to stay with an organisation, even if it increases their career opportunities elsewhere.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 74 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we explore whether investing in people’s development makes them more likely to stay with an organisation, even if it increases their career opportunities elsewhere.

There is a cartoon that does the rounds on LinkedIn every so often. It has two people, typically a Chief Financial Officer and a Chief Executive Officer. In the cartoon the CFO says “What if we train them and they leave?” to which the CEO replies “What if we don’t train them and they stay?” It’s pretty cheesy and has sparked thousands of variations. The origins of the quote probably go back to Henry Ford, who reportedly said “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay!” The sentiment clearly strikes a chord - we need to invest in people, even if it increases the risk of them leaving.

What’s missing in both the cartoon and Henry Ford quote is the other side of the equation. It implies that developing people is almost a regretful necessity - a short term investment we need to make, even if it does nothing to retain people. I’m sure we would all like to think that investing in the development of our people will make them more likely to stay, but is that actually the case? Can we increase staff retention while also making it easier for people to take their increased capability and leave?

Before I tell you the research answer to these questions, I want you to think back over your career. Think about those managers and organisations that really invested in your development. It might have been through training courses, but it was more likely time taken to mentor you and give you challenging experiences combined with support and encouragement. Were you more likely to leave as a result? Probably not. 

For me, the times I was invested into were also the times when I really wanted to stay and bring my best. And, interestingly, the times when my development was placed as a high priority were usually a combination of a great manager and a great culture of ongoing development. Continuous improvement and relentless feedback were features of the work environment. That meant some painful conversations at times as I was pushed to keep improving. I even remember telling a colleague that I wished there was a point where my leadership development was done! But it was also motivating. It seemed like everyone, from the newest employee to the most experienced, were all pushing themselves to get better. No one was pretending that they were perfect. Everybody had more to learn.

Back to my earlier cliff hanger around the research. A paper published just a week ago by Daniel Dietz and Thomas Zwick showed that investing in training significantly increases employee loyalty and retention. As people receive development that increases their chances of finding work elsewhere, they simultaneously are also more likely to stay with that employer. This increase in retention occurred even when the training meant employees could take a higher paying career path outside the business. Even gaining externally certified and portable qualifications still increased the likelihood of an individual staying with the organisation.

Richard Branson is quoted as saying “Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to”. This research helps demonstrate that investing in development is part of treating people well. It’s an investment that pays off through higher loyalty and higher retention.

While we are on the topic of development, I have a series of webinars coming out over the next few weeks. Head over to the Leadership Today website and join our mailing list to ensure you know what’s coming up. Have a great week.

Reference

Daniel Dietz, Thomas Zwick. The retention effect of training: Portability, visibility, and credibility1. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 2020