Episode 30 - Making Negative Feedback a Little Less Negative

Summary

Commentary around the effectiveness of negative feedback is mixed, with people often highlighting the adverse impact that it can have on individuals. But is there a way to make negative feedback, well, less negative?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 30 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we’re exploring how to make negative feedback a little less negative.

Commentary around the effectiveness of negative feedback is mixed, with people often highlighting the adverse impact that it can have on individuals. This has led some to recommend that leaders should avoid providing negative feedback altogether. A less extreme recommendation is typically to provide much more positive feedback than negative feedback, which makes a lot of sense. We should put a lot more effort into guiding people towards an objective, rather than correcting them for straying from the path. But is there a way to make negative feedback, well, less negative?

Let’s step outside the business context for a moment, and into the world of friendships. Recent research has shown that as a friendship deepens, the friends seek and provide more negative feedback to each other. In contrast, the deepening friendship doesn’t lead to an increase or decrease in the amount of positive feedback provided. It seems that the depth of the connection allows negative feedback to play a more constructive role in the relationship. The friendship becomes a safe place where people can provide and receive candid feedback to help each other improve. 

So what’s the difference between positive and negative feedback. One simple distinction is that positive feedback seeks to recognise and reinforce a behaviour. In contrast negative feedback seeks to identify a behaviour that should be reduced or changed.

As we covered in an earlier episode, one way to make feedback more effective is to focus on the behaviour demonstrated, and the impact of that behaviour on you and others. But what other conditions are specific to making negative feedback work? How do we make it more like the negative feedback close friends seek and provide to each other?

Two pieces of research provide helpful insight into making negative feedback more constructive. The first is a very recent meta analysis of 78 studies into the impact of negative feedback on intrinsic motivation. The second study looked specifically at the factors that moderate an employees reaction to negative feedback. Taken together, these two studies highlight four important principles when we need to provide negative feedback. 

1. Connection matters - much like in the earlier research about negative feedback in friendships, the closer the connection, the more effective the negative feedback. And face to face feedback works best. This allows a much richer conversation that factors in the subtle non verbal cues so important in communication.

2. Your motivation matters - being considerate makes a difference. This could mean acknowledging that the feedback is difficult to give, but that you really want the person to develop and improve. In fact, you wouldn’t be providing the feedback unless you cared about the person’s development and progress.

3. Quality matters - negative feedback works best when it is data and criteria based. This could involve highlighting how the negative behaviour is adversely impacting on performance measures for the role, and how the desired behaviour will help the individual. 

4. Guidance matters - the research demonstrated that negative feedback was more effective when there was clear guidance about how to improve. Such guidance helps demonstrate that you are willing to support the individual’s development. 

Most people don’t enjoy giving or receiving negative feedback, but if delivered well using these four principles it can be an important driver of further development. So as a final reminder, connection matters, your motivation matters, quality matters, and guidance matters. 

I hope you found this episode helpful. As always, please recommend the podcast to a friend or colleague. And you can get in touch via the leadership.today website if you have any thoughts or feedback on the episode. See you next week!

Research

A Meta-Analysis of Negative Feedback on Intrinsic Motivation. Fong, Carlton J; Patall, Erika A; Vasquez, Ariana C; Stautberg, Sandra. Educational Psychology Review; New York Vol. 31, Iss. 1,  (Mar 2019): 121-162.

Moderators of employee reactions to negative feedback. Steelman, Lisa A; Rutkowski, Kelly A. Journal of Managerial Psychology; Bradford Vol. 19, Iss. 1/2,  (2004): 6-18.

When friends exchange negative feedback. Finkelstein, Stacey R; Fishbach, Ayelet; Tu, Yanping. Motivation and Emotion; New York Vol. 41, Iss. 1,  (Feb 2017): 69-83

Episode 29 - Chronotypes and the Perils of Working 9 to 5

Summary

Working 9 to 5 may not be the best way for everyone to maximise their productivity. In this episode we look at the science of chronotypes, and how leaders can use our natural sleep/wake cycles to get the best out of their people. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 29 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. Today we are talking about chronotypes and the perils of working 9 to 5. 

As you wade into research about patterns in daily productivity, focus and sleep, you find a wealth of information, often confusing and sometimes contradictory. So let’s start with the basics. Chronotypes are used to categorise people based on their sleep/wake cycles across a 24 hour period. There are three main chronotypes - morning, intermediate and evening types. These follow a normal distribution, so 50% of people are classed as intermediate types. But even these intermediate types can have a preference towards morning or evening. 

Your chronotype impacts when you best exercise, concentrate, eat and sleep - it’s not just a learned preference, it has a biological basis. Hormones are part of that biological basis. For example, the hormone melatonin starts being produced in greater levels by the pineal gland as a person approaches sleep, it peaks during the night, and then more rapidly declines towards waking time. Another hormone, cortisol, follows an opposing pattern - rising as morning approaches, peaking later in the morning, then tapering off towards evening. Cortisol is typically classed as a stress hormone, and you’ve probably only heard bad things about it. But, in moderation, it has a number of positive benefits relating to concentration, energy levels, and positive mood.

Peaks in melatonin typically vary by around four hours between morning and evening types.  A morning type could have a melatonin level at 7pm that an evening type doesn’t reach until 11pm. Some research has even seen ranges in melatonin peaks of up to ten hours. You can imagine the impact of forcing morning and evening types to go to sleep or wake at the same time. Yet so often our business hours are a compromise between these two types - 9 to 5.

I’m definitely a morning person, and that has become even clearer now I have greater flexibility over my day. This morning preference has also become more pronounced as I age, but more on that soon.

In contrast, I remember a participant on a leadership program with a quite different chronotype to me. She really struggled with the program’s 8.30am start time, which was an hour earlier than when she usually got to work. She wasn’t particularly sharp in the morning. While others were asking questions and engaging in activities, this participant took a while to warm up. However, at the very point when most people were fading in the afternoon, this person came into their own - they were asking questions, engaging with activities and were much more physically animated. 

During a break I asked what her perfect work day would look like if she had absolute freedom to choose. It turns out her perfect work day would be 11am to 7.30pm. In fact she had even suggested these work hours to her manager. This would allow her to get up around 9.30am, and still have time to get to the gym before work. But most of her fellow team members were working 8.30am to 5pm, and her manager thought an 11am start would be too extreme. They ended up negotiating a compromise of 9.30am to 6pm, but it was common for her to work an extra hour or two at the end of the agreed work day when she felt particularly sharp and focused. Interestingly she did work her preferred hours when she worked from home - no one noticed any difference and she felt great. I wonder how much those compromised hours are costing her and the business. 

The impact of having people working outside their preferred hours is much like crossing time zones - having to wake consistently earlier, or later than our natural biological rhythms. This wreaks havoc on our bodies and health. Even one hour shifts for daylight saving changes mess with our biological clocks, and you can even see the impact of that in mental health and crime statistics.

Sleep wake cycles are also linked to age. Teenagers need more sleep, and tend to shift towards later sleep and wake times, achieving what’s known as “peak lateness” at 19 years old. Given this, the optimal school day for most teenagers should start around 10am or even later. As we age, we tend to shift more towards the morning. For example, men on average shift from evening to morning types around 40 years of age. So older workers may prefer an earlier start, but there is a very broad distribution of preferences at any age. 

As a leader there are a number of ways in which we can take chronotypes into account to support both individuals and the business:

1. Ask individuals - if they could pick their perfect work hours, what would they be? It’s important to not set up an expectation that you can automatically provide these hours, but it’s a great question to gain additional information that could impact rosters and work times. 

2. Assess and raise awareness about chronotypes - The Center for Environmental Therapeutics has an online version of the often-used Morning Evening Questionnaire (or MEQ) which can help people to identify their chronotype. I’ve included a link to the questionnaire in the show notes (http://www.cet-surveys.com/index.php?sid=61524).

3. Provide flexibility - encourage people to trial different work hours when they are working at home. Just be aware that, like jet lag, it takes a few days to adjust into a new rhythm. 

4. Communicate - like any other diversity in the workplace, there is a risk of misunderstanding. Make sure you communicate when people are trialing new hours so people don’t think the other types are being lazy by either leaving earlier or arriving later than usual. 

5. Focus on outputs - measure what people deliver, not how long it takes them or the process. This will provide people with greater flexibility over how they produce results. 

And chronotypes aren’t just about how you lead others, they’re also important for managing yourself. Here are some things to try if you’re struggling with your sleep/wake cycle:

1. Complete the assessment - find out what your preferred chronotype is.

2. Negotiate work time experiments. Sometimes managers are concerned about making large changes and what that might mean for them and the team they manage. Turning this into experiments may give them more confidence. Even if your new work hours are a complete failure, they can always change back. 

3. Go with consistent sleep times - go to bed and wake up at the same times every day. It makes a huge difference in really establishing those rhythms.

4. Make sure you get plenty of light in the morning and not much at night - get outdoors in the morning so your brain and body can synch with sunlight cues, and avoid screens at night. In winter consider bright lights in morning and dimmer lighting in the evenings.

5. Sleep is really tightly linked with diet and exercise, so improvements in these will also help the quality of our sleep.  

6. Read up - there are two really interesting books that I highly recommend around these topics:

   • Why we sleep: The new science of sleep and dreams. By Matthew Walker. It includes some fascinating science, and there’s a particularly great narrator on the audio book - in fact I’ve fallen asleep while listening to that book on more than one flight.

   • When: The scientific secrets of perfect timing. By Daniel Pink. Daniel has a fantastic ability to consolidate a broad range of scientific research together with entertaining stories focused on decision making and chronotypes.

Well I hope you found the content in this episode helpful. As always it would be great if you could share the podcast with your friends and work colleagues, and please make contact via the leadership.today website if you have any feedback or questions. See you next week. 

Research

Find out your type by taking the Morning Evening Questionnaire by the Center for Environmental Therapeutics: http://www.cet-surveys.com/index.php?sid=61524 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868668/ - Emotion. 2016 Jun; 16(4): 431–435.

Published online 2016 Mar 7. Positive upshots of cortisol in everyday life

Lindsay T. Hoyt,1,* Katharine H. Zeiders,2 Katherine B. Ehrlich,3 and Emma K. Adam3,4,*

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/the-land-nod/201301/changing-night-owl-lark

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0178782

Episode 28 - How Leaders Create an Environment Where People Thrive

Summary

How do leaders create an environment where people thrive? This week we look at the importance of leadership styles in helping to bring out the best in our people.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 28 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we’re looking at how leaders create an environment where people thrive, which is building on some of the themes from last week’s episode.

When I was 15 my first part time job was at a large retailer. My job title was ‘Customer Service Security’, which sounds pretty impressive, but in practice that meant I was the person who checked bags as people left the store to make sure they hadn’t stolen anything. At that time the retailer had a garden department with its own street entrance, so it wasn’t uncommon for people to come in the main entrance, steal something, then try to make a quick escape through the garden department. Of course they had to get past Customer Service Security first. By any measure, this wasn’t a great job to give to a 15 year old, but it was character building if nothing else. Another of my responsibilities was to help people who were returning goods, checking their receipts and passing them through to a person who could give them a refund. 

There’s one refund that has stuck in my mind 30 years after the event. A man came into the garden department one Saturday morning carrying what looked like a stick with a black plastic bag on one end. He let me know that he wanted a full cash refund on the item. I looked at the receipt, and what he had originally purchased a full three months earlier was a bare-rooted lemon tree. You see occasionally had specials where we would sell a bunch of young trees with minimal soil around the roots which were then sealed in a plastic bag - which made it much easier than shipping and selling them than putting them in pots. But this guy had bought the bare-rooted lemon tree, taken it home and put it in his garage for a full three months - no sunlight, no water, no nutrients, no space to grow. It didn’t take a horticultural qualification to realise the lemon tree was dead. Amazingly, our generous refund policy meant the man left with a full refund, and we were left wondering what to do with a dead stick in a bag.

There are a few important leadership principles wrapped up in this story. The most obvious one is that, as leaders, we need to create an environment where people can thrive. Just like the lemon tree needed to be planted in good soil, with access to sunlight, water and nutrients to thrive, as leaders we need to provide an environment where people can thrive. I’ll talk more about how we can do that shortly.

The second equally important principle is that we can’t force people to be motivated and to grow - that comes from within the person themselves. As leaders it’s important to recognise that we can’t directly motivate anyone to do anything. The closest we can get is through demands and threats, which is unfortunately what all too many leaders default to. While that might lead to a short-term lift in performance driven by fear, ultimately the impact is negative on the individual and the organisation.

Instead what we’re aiming for is aligned motivation. If someone shows up at your workplace, they’re motivated. As a leader our role is to uncover what specifically motivates that individual, and to help align that with the direction and needs of the organisation. We do that by creating the right environment.

In summary - the person owns the motivation, and the leader owns the environment that helps to align that motivation.

So how do leaders shape the environment? We shape the environment through the leadership behaviours we demonstrate - the actions we take that build the kind of environment where people can thrive. The concept of leadership styles is not new - the styles I refer to are informed by over 80 years of research by people including Kurt Lewin, Fred Fiedler, Martin Evans, Robert House, James McGregor Burns, Bernard Bass, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. 

There are four sets of leadership behaviours or leadership styles that are particularly helpful in building a positive environment.

The first leadership style is Inspiring. This involves developing a compelling vision for the work that we undertake, communicating that vision, and aligning roles and individuals to the vision. This helps to increase clarity, and it also encourages alignment. People know where we are headed, they know their role, and they can connect their own motivations with that broader purpose. This is like sunlight for the lemon tree - providing energy and a direction to grow. My own research with over 1,000 leaders demonstrated that having a feeling you’re contributing to something meaningful reduced negative stress by 31%, and increased engagement by 74%. It even increased an individual’s likelihood of staying with the organisation by a full 87%.

The second leadership style is Developing. Here we’re discussing the skills and capabilities people want to develop, coaching people, providing stretch opportunities, and investing in their development. This ensures people are developing their capability, while we’re also building the capacity of the organisation. This is like watering the lemon tree - encouraging its development. Here my research saw more significant results. Where people felt they were developing in areas important to them, their stress was 26% lower, engagement was up by 60% and again the likelihood of staying was up by 87%.

The third leadership style is Connecting. This is where we help connect people with others that can provide support, while we also identify opportunities to work across the organisation, build teamwork, and provide direct support and encouragement. This style helps ensure people have the support they need, while also building collaboration for the organisation. This is like adding nutrients to give that extra boost to the lemon tree. Where people felt their job provided the chance to make meaningful connections, my research showed a 22% reduction in negative stress, with engagement up 57% and likelihood of staying up 68%.

The fourth style is Delegating. Here we delegate important work to people, even when it may mean a short term dip in performance. We focus more on accountabilities and outcomes, giving people greater freedom about how they produce results. This provides the individual with authority, while also enabling us to hold them accountable. It’s like giving the lemon tree extra room to grow - putting it in a larger pot, or planting it with plenty of space to spread out. Again my research showed that providing people with autonomy and freedom has a significant impact, with negative work-related stress down 20%, engagement up 52% and likelihood of staying up 55%.

There are two other styles that also influence the work environment, but not always in a positive way.

Directing is about telling people how to do their work, closely monitoring people, and emphasising the negative consequences of getting things wrong. There are some times when this leadership style is appropriate - it provides task clarity and control. But it does this at the cost of autonomy and personal responsibility. This one is a bit like yelling at the lemon tree - it might make you feel better, but the tree won’t take much notice.

The final leadership style is Avoiding. As the name suggests, this is where a person avoids the role of being leader altogether, keeping tasks to themselves, focusing on their own job, and avoiding delegating to people who have let them down. While the individual may be productive, team productivity is likely to be low. It looks a lot like the guy who left the lemon tree in his garage so he could focus on other things. Perhaps that worked well for him, but it didn’t turn out too well for the lemon tree.

The really good news is that, like any other behaviour, leadership styles can be developed. A great way to start is to assess your own leadership styles. I’ve developed a great card-sort exercise which I use on leadership programs that helps people to identify their preferred styles. And I also have a Leadership Styles Self-Assessment which I’m providing as a free gift for those who sign up for Leadership Today updates. Just head to the leadership.today website, and sign up on the Connect page and I’ll send you a link. If you’ve already signed up, have no fear - I’ll be emailing you a link shortly.

I’ll be interested in how you find the assessment, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next week.

Note: The concept of leadership styles is not new, and the styles in this podcast are informed by over 80 years of research by people including Kurt Lewin, Fred Fiedler, Martin Evans, Robert House, James McGregor Burns, Bernard Bass, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard.  This particular combination of leadership styles (Inspiring, Developing, Connecting, Delegating, Directing and Avoiding) and their impact on the work environment is unique, and copyright by Leadership Today.

Episode 27 - Psychological Safety - The Hard Edge to Feeling Safe at Work

Summary

How safe do you feel at work to speak up, raise an idea or a concern, or to try something new? This week we look at psychological safety, and how it has an unexpectedly hard edge.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 27 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we’re looking at psychological safety - the hard edge to feeling safe at work.

How safe do you feel at work to speak up, raise an idea or a concern, or to try something new?

There has been increasing interest over the past few years about the importance of psychological safety in the workplace, a concept originating in the 1990s. This has been driven, in no small part, by highly publicised research conducted by Google on what makes a team effective at Google - which they called project Aristotle.

Before we go too much further, it’s worth talking about some of the details and definitions of the study.

They defined a team as being a group of people who are highly interdependent - that team members need each other to produce results. They’re not just working alongside each other.

They studied a wide and diverse range of teams, from 3 to 50 individuals - with the median size being 9 team members.

They explored the effectiveness of teams, using a range of measures including evaluations by the executives, team leaders, team members and also sales performance. And they explored a range of variables gathered through interviews and survey data, alongside demographics such as tenure and location.

Now they’re quick to note that this is what matters for teams at Google - obviously these results may vary elsewhere. 

This research was interesting as much for what they found didn’t matter, at least when working at Google: things like colocation (working in the same place), team size, individual performance, and extroversion levels - none of those factors had a significant impact.

So what were the factors they found to be most significant for effective teams? They found five factors, and let’s work through those in reverse order of importance:

• Number five was having an impact - making a difference was really important

• Number four was a sense of meaning and purpose

• Number three was structure and clarity - where people understood their role and objectives

• Number two was dependability - where people reliably complete work on time

• And the number one factor, as you might expect, was psychological safety

One definition of psychological safety is “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking”.  Basically I feel confident people won’t “embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.”

Importantly, psychological safety isn’t ’soft’ - it isn’t about avoiding disagreements or withholding corrective feedback - it’s not about bubble wrapping the environment so people can’t hurt themselves. Rather, an environment with psychological safety is supportive but stretching. Once people are free to try things and make mistakes, we are better able to set high standards and hold people to account. A workplace with psychological safety isn’t about comfort - in fact, it can feel quite uncomfortable as you’re being stretched into new areas (you might want to see our episode on conscious incompetence). However, you feel supported. You are still responsible for the consequences of your actions, but your fellow team members want you to succeed and have got your back. It’s better to think of psychological safety as something that makes people confident, not comfortable.

There are two major leadership styles, or sets of leadership behaviours that are most relevant to psychological safety:

• The first is Connecting - that, as leaders, we help to connect people with others that can support them - we work on the team and seek to build team effectiveness

• The second is Delegating - we provide the freedom for people to try things out, we give them autonomy, and we delegate important responsibilities to them

So that sounds great for the individual, but what’s in it for the organisation? Providing a connected and supportive workplace leads to increased collaboration. It’s an environment where people are much more willing to contribute, take chances, learn from each other, and contribute to each others’ success. And providing authority allows us to hold people to account.

Holding people accountable may initially sound negative, but of course it also involves proving positive feedback and celebrating successes. Google started a company called X, which now sits under Alphabet. They also called this the “Moonshot Factory”. Here their mission was to  “create radical new technologies to solve some of the world’s hardest problems”. They had projects like using balloons to provide internet access in remote locations, drone delivery, self-driving vehicles, and kites to generate electricity. Importantly they don’t just celebrate successes, but also celebrate projects that are shut down - recognising the efforts put in, even if ultimately the project doesn’t prove to be feasible.

In summary, nice cultures aren’t always nice places to work, if that niceness means covering over disagreements. As leaders, let’s build environments where people can stretch themselves, try new things, make the occasional mistake, learn from that, and ultimately develop to produce even greater results.

Well I hope you found today’s podcast helpful and if you did it would be great if you could recommend it to a few of your friends. The podcast is really growing in terms of the number of people downloading it each week, and that makes a real difference in terms of the impact we can have in developing leaders.

Also, if some of the content in today’s podcast was of interest, I have a one day leadership foundations program which covers things like motivation, leadership styles, building resilience - a range of things that are really important across a number of leadership roles. If that’s of interest, just make contact via the website at leadership.today. And while I’m on the topic, if you go to the connect page there you can sign up for our regular updates and also to connect with us on LinkedIn and Facebook. See you next week.

References

https://www.strategy-business.com/article/How-Fearless-Organizations-Succeed

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?smid=pl-share

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2666999?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/introduction/

Episode 26 - Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - Why We Get What We Expect

Summary

The self-fulfilling prophecy describes how our expectations of others can lead them to act in a way that confirms those expectations. As leaders it’s time to reset our expectations so we can get the best out of our people and stop holding them back.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 26 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we’re looking at self-fulfilling prophecies, and why we get what we expect.

It’s a sunny Wednesday in 1932 as the CEO of Last National Bank walks towards his desk. The bank is thriving and financially strong, and Cartright Millingville is rightly proud of the business he oversees. But as he continues past the tellers, he notices the queue of people lining up is much longer than usual - nothing to worry about at this point, but certainly different to most Wednesday mornings. As he takes a seat at this desk the noise and activity in the bank gradually grows, with people becoming increasingly unruly. And that’s because this is no ordinary day - hundreds of people are lining up to withdraw all of their funds from the bank, having heard a rumour of the bank’s imminent collapse. Despite the bank’s strong financial position, it could not survive the initially false, but ultimately true, perception that it might be at risk. The bank collapsed and closed its doors permanently the same day. The false perception became fact.

The sociologist Robert Merton shares this example in his classic 1948 paper - The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. In the paper he describes how our expectations can influence the world around us. Thinking that a financial institution is at risk of collapse can ultimately lead to its collapse. In the same way, our expectations of others can lead them to behave in line with these expectations. Merton defines the self-fulfilling prophecy as “a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the originally false conception come true.” And, of course, this outcome strengthens the original perception of the situation, as Merton continues “for the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning”. 

A common example of a self-fulfilling prophecy is the placebo effect. In drug trials, prospective new medications are put up against placebo pills. These placebo pills have no direct physical impact on the individual. But believing that a placebo tablet will have an impact is often enough for it to actually have that impact. For that reason, finding drugs that work better than placebos can be difficult. It’s not that a placebo is neutral - the expectation the person has of the placebo tablet actually makes that outcome more likely. More recent research demonstrates that the placebo effect is so strong, it can still work even when the person knows that they’re taking a placebo. By way of example, Dr Ted Kaptchuk treated patients with irritable bowel syndrome by giving them a tablet openly identified to the patient as a placebo. This group demonstrated significant improvement in their symptoms compared to a group that didn’t receive a placebo. As Dr Kaptchuck notes, this clearly can’t work for all medical issues. However he sees the greatest potential for so called ‘open-label’ placebo treatments in conditions that are largely measured through self-observation - conditions including pain, nausea and fatigue. Placebo tablets and treatments are a great example of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Classic experiments in schools have also shown the impact of the self-fulfilling prophecy. In the 1960s, Rosenthal and Jacobsen undertook a series of experiments with teachers and students. In one experiment, they chose a group of students at random and told teachers that those children had taken a test which showed they were “growth spurters” - that they had high potential and were likely to experience great progress in the year to come. The children weren’t aware of this finding - only the teachers knew. But the group was actually not special - they hadn’t taken a test and had no reason to advance more quickly than their peers. At the end of the year the evidence was in - the students identified as “growth spurters” to the teachers demonstrated significantly greater improvement across the year than their peers. Believing a student had greater potential led them to demonstrate greater potential. This research has been replicated many times and while some more recent research has questioned the size of the effect, the effect is still there.

So how does this work? It’s believed teachers’ expectations impact the way they treat their students and this, in turn, changes the behaviour of the students, helping them to reach those expectations. If I think a student has high potential, I’ll treat them differently, by giving them more opportunities to develop and demonstrate this potential. 

Research has found this same effect alive and well in our organisations too, where supervisor expectations can modify performance. Which raises another point - having low expectations can also lead people to reduced performance.

As a leader, findings like these should make us pause and think: What expectations do I have of my people? What evidence do I have for these expectations? Are my expectations limiting the performance and potential of my people?

What if we wiped the slate clean as leaders and expected more out of our people? What impact might that have?

What if we expect that people turn up to work wanting to do a good job. That people can and want to develop and improve. That if the conditions are right, people can deliver even more than what we expect of them.

While we’re at it, what expectations do we have of ourselves? Are there limiting beliefs you have about yourself that lead people to treat you differently? Perhaps you don’t expect to get a promotion, and this leads others to see you as less worthy of a promotion. Perhaps you joke about being lazy, which leads others to see you as lazy. You might take some time this week to consider your strengths. One way to do this is to take a survey like the VIA Character Strengths which can help identify your unique strengths. Embracing your strengths will help you to present more confidently to others, and change the way they view you in line with the expectations you place on yourself.

Let me know how you go, and have a great week.

References

The Self-Fulfilling ProphecyAuthor(s): Robert K. MertonSource: The Antioch Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer, 1948), pp. 193-210

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/placebo-can-work-even-know-placebo-201607079926

Eden, D. (1984). Self-fulfilling prophecy as a management tool: Harnessing Pygmalion. The Academy of Management Review, 9(1), 64-73.

VIA Character Strengths Survey - available free - www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey

Episode 25 - Leading Through Change

Summary

Being able to effectively manage change is an essential skill for any leader. In this episode we explore the stages of change that people work through, and what they need from their leaders to support the change. 

Transcript

Welcome to episode 25 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges.

Change is an essential part of the modern workplace. Hardly a week will go by without some kind of change that we need to manage. Some authors have likened working through change to the stages of grief. The five stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Depression, Bargaining and Acceptance) were Initially developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She actually used these labels to describe the stages that terminally ill patients go through as they process what their illness means to them. It was then applied to people grieving the loss of a loved one, however research shows that grief is complex, and doesn’t necessarily follow neat stages.

Cynthia Scott and Dennis Jaffe proposed that people move through four stages when coming to terms, and eventually engaging, with change - Denial, Resistance, Exploration and Commitment. Like the stages of grief, these don’t necessarily play out as neatly as the model would suggest, however it’s an extremely helpful framework for leaders in understanding how they can support and encourage people through change. 

In the first stage, Denial, a person is trying to avoid the change by not taking action. They often act like nothing has happened. When they are forced to discuss the change, they may question the evidence behind the need for change, or blame those driving the change. I remember working through an office move. We had been in the same location for many years, but our lease was coming to an end, and the building managers didn’t want to renew the lease. So we found a new location and encouraged people to start clearing up around their areas to get ready for the move. I remember one person that didn’t seem to be involved in the clearing up. As I spoke to them, they were clearly in denial about the change. In fact they thought it was an elaborate ruse to get people to clean up their areas, and that we wouldn’t be moving office at all. And while that seems a little strange, it speaks volumes about what people need at this stage of change. Firstly, leaders need to accept that denial is a normal part of the change process. People need time and further information so they can get used to the change. As a leader you also need to expect that productivity will drop. I’m yet to hear of anyone who has moved offices without a pretty significant impact on productivity, and that will be the same for any other major change.

In the second stage, Resistance, people take on a more active opposition to the change. Active and passive resistance starts to occur. People can end up complaining, demonstrate frustration, and even become depressed. They will identify and raise numerous reasons why the change won’t work. As a leader, this can be quite challenging. You might even find yourself starting to doubt the ability for the organisation to change at this point. It’s important to recognise that you can’t get people through this stage with logic and reason. Additional data and evidence is unlikely to help. What people need is a leader who will listen to them and acknowledge the emotional component of the change. It’s really important to maintain your own composure at this point too. It’s very easy to become angry and argumentative yourself, which will only inflame the situation further. Instead, encourage the team to keep talking to you and each other about the change, and particularly focus on what lies ahead, while also recognising the feeling of loss about what is in the past.

Exploration is the third stage and, as the name suggests, this is when people start to actively engage with the change. At this stage people will want to come up with new ideas, to solve problems, and to try new things. While this is positive, it is worth recognising that this will distract people from core business. That inevitable drop in productivity will continue into this stage, despite the enthusiasm and energy people are demonstrating. As a leader you will need to focus people’s energy at this stage towards productive tasks. Think about how people can work together to progress the change. It’s also worth noting that people will reach this stage at different points, and may even cycle back into Resistance if they don’t feel their efforts are being recognised. You will want to encourage people to support others through the change - those in Exploration can really help those in the Resistance stage, so think about how you might engage people in that way.

The fourth and final stage is Commitment. Here people feel comfortable with the change, and are confident and in control. They will become more productive as the distracting elements of the change have been addressed. As a leader, it’s tempting at this stage to think your job is done. However, you should take the time to celebrate and recognise people’s efforts in working through the change. You can also help prepare people for the next change by reflecting on lessons learned.

This week you could reflect on the changes that are occurring in your workplace. What stage are you up to in the change? Where do you think members of your team are at? What do they need from you to make it to the next stage?

Thanks for joining me again this week. And a quick update - I’ve released a one day Leadership Foundations program, targeted at frontline to mid-level leaders. It covers:

• Leadership and motivation 

• Leadership styles 

• Coaching and feedback 

• Focus and resilience 

The feedback on the program has been great. If you or someone else in your organisation would be interested in learning more about the program, make contact with me via the leadership.today website. I’m also working on an online version of the program people can undertake over a two week period, so let me know if you’re interested in a discounted trial. See you next week.

References

Cynthia Scott and Dennis Jaffe (2006) Change Management: Leading People Through Organizational Transitions 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/supersurvivors/201707/why-the-five-stages-grief-are-wrong

Episode 24 - Conscious Incompetence - Why Learning New Things is Painful

Summary

Learning new things can be painful. Understand why that’s the case can help us, both as learners and leaders, to become more effective. This week we look at a framework to help us understand the predictable stages of learning, and what that requires from us as leaders.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 24 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges.

When’s the last time you learned something new? How did that feel? 

The workplace is changing rapidly, which means as leaders we are often needing to try things that we haven’t tried before. But learning something new can be hard - it typically involves an element of feeling awkward. Why is that? And what does it mean for us and our teams?

Chances are that at some point in your life your learnt to drive a car. You may have even taught someone else to drive. 

What does it feel like as the learner heads towards a car for their first lesson. They’re no doubt a little nervous, but are also typically keen to give it a try. Often there’s an assumption that driving a car can’t be that difficult - after all, they’ve seen thousands of others do it every day - how hard can it be? Martin Broadwell described four levels of learning back in 1969, and he referred to this stage as Unconscious Incompetence - the learner doesn’t know what they don’t know. They can’t possibly know how hard it might be to learn to drive a car because they’ve never done it before. The leader needs to invest effort and time in helping the learner at this point, as they’re likely to need really clear directions.

So what happens in those first few lessons? No doubt the learner stalls the car, maybe forgets to indicate, or even has a near miss with another car. They might choose the wrong gear or clip the kerb while taking a corner. Their lack of skill in the task is quickly uncovered. But what does that feel like? It feels awful. Every element of driving at this stage takes a lot of thought and planning - knowing where to position the car in the lane, what kind of distance to keep from the car in front, how to translate the images in the mirror to know where other cars are. Broadwell called this Conscious Incompetence - the learner is all too aware of just how much they don’t know, and it often feels awful. Unless there’s sufficient motivation, the learner may even give up at this stage. What the learner needs at this stage is plenty of encouragement to keep on learning. 

Let’s assume the learner sticks with it. Over the next year they’re likely to become better at driving. Things will become more predictable and in control. They will still need to concentrate on elements of driving, but it will start to feel more comfortable and natural. They need fewer directions from the leader, aside from the occasional new element of encouragement. Broadwell called this stage Conscious Competence - the learner now knows how to do the task, but it still requires quite a lot of conscious thought and effort. 

And, over time, if the learner driver continues to gain experience and develop their skills, eventually they will reach Unconscious Competence. This is the stage where the skill becomes automatic. Have you ever had that experience of driving somewhere and not remembering much of the trip? That’s likely an example of Unconscious Competence. All the gear changes, lane changes, braking, accelerating, mirror checks and everything else becomes automatic - only exceptional circumstances are likely to require you to use conscious thought and effort. You don’t need much input from the person training you - they have effectively delegated the task to you. The leader needs to adapt their approach to the learner at this stage, otherwise they end up becoming the equivalent of a back seat driver - barking directions at someone who is perfectly capable of doing a great job. While this stage is great as a learner, it can make it hard to then teach someone else that skill. It can be hard to remember what it was like to learn to drive. There can be elements of driving that you find difficult to explain because they’ve become automatic over the years.

I remember stepping into my first leadership role. There was so much in the role that was new - motivating others, analysing finances, putting together a business plan, hiring staff, laying off staff - it was almost overwhelming. I was absolutely aware of my short comings and just how much I needed to learn. Fortunately I had people around me who were prepared to invest in my development, and I was also motivated to keep going. But it did lead me at points to question my ability - perhaps I was the wrong person for the job - surely someone else could do this better than I could? And it also challenged me as my team became more and more capable. Was I willing to delegate things entirely? Or did I want to retain some control, just like the back seat driver?

Putting ourselves in the position of Conscious Incompetence is a necessary part of growth and development. And helping others through this stage with support and encouragement is critical if we are to retain our best people and keep them motivated.

What parts of your role fall in the Conscious Incompetence stage? Are there new challenges on the horizon that might push you back into that zone for some tasks?

Where do your team members fall on their various responsibilities? Are there some that require additional support? Do you need to fully delegate to others who are now performing well, and stop back seat driving?

How can you use this framework to prepare others for new responsibilities? 

I hope you found this episode helpful. I’m so grateful for those of you who download the podcast each week and share it with others - it makes a huge difference. Leadership Today is now one of the top leadership podcasts on Spotify, which means even more people are discovering the podcast and working on their leadership. I look forward to speaking with you again next week.

Episode 23 - Conflict - Ouch!

Summary

Conflict - love it or hate it, you’re going to end up facing conflict at some point. In this episode we discuss some ways of tackling conflict head on. 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to episode 23 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges.

What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘conflict’? When I ask this question on leadership programs, the first things people typically think of are negative. But research suggests that conflict isn’t automatically bad, but neither is it always good. There’s something about the way in which conflict is managed that makes a difference. 

What is conflict? 

Conflict occurs where two or more people aren’t thinking alike - where they have differences of opinion, or where their interests don’t align. In this way conflict is the product of diversity - of diverse views, diverse experiences and diverse ways of thinking. We know that diversity, when harnessed and managed, has a broad range of positive impacts on organisational performance. But diversity brings with it conflict which also needs to be managed. 

Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann define conflict situations as “those in which the concerns of two people appear to be incompatible.” This definition highlights that in conflict concerns only need to appear to be incompatible - it is entirely possible that with further exploration seemingly incompatible interests may actually be reconciled. 

How do we approach conflict?

We typically approach conflict based on our preferences and previous experiences of conflict. There’s also a cultural overlay, with different cultures varying in how comfortable people are with disagreements. Depending on these factors, when it comes to conflict it’s easy to take an all or nothing approach - to either argue forcefully for our position, or to avoid the conflict altogether. There are times when these approaches can be valid, but those times are the exception rather than the rule. 

Our goal in managing conflict is to make the most of the diversity - to actively engage in discussion. To refine ideas and improve them by making the most of a diversity of views. And it’s also to build and maintain healthy working relationships. There may be little point winning an argument if it also means losing a key partnership. And of course we want to conclude with a clear way forward. 

With those goals in mind, here are some tips for tackling conflict head on in a healthy and constructive way:

1. Start with you - why does this issue matter to you? What’s your ultimate goal, not just the initial position you’ve taken? What have been your experiences of conflict in the past? What emotions is this conflict likely to produce in you? Are you prepared to shift your position in the face of additional information? You might consider self-assessments such as the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument as these can boost awareness of how you typically approach conflict.

2. State your intent - that you want to resolve the conflict and build the relationship. That you want to arrive at a better solution. Also let people know the extent to which you’re willing to change your position based on new information or perspectives.

3. Agree ground rules. Members of a senior leadership team I served on were clear that we wanted to have robust discussions, and that it was okay for not all of us to have the same perspective. But while we didn’t always agree, we made sure we left each meeting on the same page - talking about the final outcome as if we had come up with the approach ourselves, even if we had been arguing against it 20 minutes earlier. You might agree to keep things confidential, to be frank - whatever it might be, discussing ground rules helps.

4. Listen - and really listen - to the other position. Listen to understand rather than just argue back. So often we’re concentrating on only hearing opportunities to disagree and argue back rather than really trying to understand what’s important to the other person, and why it’s important to them. I remember going into a potentially heated conversation with one word written in all capitals at the top of my notepad - that word was LISTEN. Genuinely seeking to understand the other person’s position took all the heat out of the discussion. 

5. Shake hands. Whether figuratively or literally but, either way, leave on a positive note. Leaving a disagreement unresolved can lead to it festering and sapping energy. 

Perhaps the best advice on conflict is the quote from Karl Weick - “Argue like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong.”

If you found this podcast helpful, you might also find episode 6 on assertiveness helpful as well - you can find it and all our precious episodes at leadership.today You can also use the connect link there to follow me on LinkedIn, to join our Facebook group, and to receive email updates about new episodes. 

References

Riaz, Muhammad & Junaid, Fatima. (2013). Workplace Conflict: Constructive or Destructive. SSRN Electronic Journal. 10.2139/ssrn.2247886. 

Reference: Thomas, K. W., and Kilmann, R. H. "An Overview of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)."Kilmann Diagnostics Website (2009). 

Episode 22 - Goal Setting - New Year, Same You

Summary

As the end of the year fast approaches, we take a look at goal setting - something we all know a lot about, and yet we’re lousy at it. Here are four ideas that might help.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 22 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we tackle one of today’s biggest leadership challenges.

If I was to ask you “Tell me about the best approaches to goal setting?”, you’re pretty likely to mention SMART goals. We all know goals work best when they’re Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based. And yet as human beings we are still pretty lousy at setting and following through on goals. Today I want to focus on four quick tips for setting better goals. 

A few years back I set a goal for myself - I said “I want to become a better cook”. So I dutifully picked up Jamie Oliver’s 15 minute meals book - that sounded pretty achievable. I picked out a meal and got to work. Well, 90 minutes, one fennel and three fry pans later, the meal still didn’t look anything like the photo in the book. Plus I discovered that Jamie hadn’t factored in cleaning up time to the 15 minutes. I gave up.

Around the same time I set myself another goal - “I will go for a run every day of the week except Sunday”. Now I had tried running before, even setting a goal to run three times a week. But the inevitable happened - Monday it was a little cold, Tuesday I just wasn’t feeling it, Wednesday there was the sound of rain on the roof - and so on until Saturday. To make up for the lost days I would then run three times as far on Saturday and injure myself, knocking out running for another week. In contrast, my “run every day except Sunday” strategy has held up for over a year. So what made that goal stick, unlike my goal around becoming a better cook?

1. The first difference is word choice - there’s a big difference between “want” and “will”. If you say you want to do something, you’re indicating a preference. If you say you will do something, you’re stating a commitment. Commitments trump preferences any day. Always make sure you express your goal as a “will” statement.

2. Second is the middle part of SMART goal setting - Achievable. This is partly about setting a goal that you think is possible. But it’s also about setting goals that you can actually mark off as complete. The beauty of the “run every day except Sunday” goal is that I either completed it in a particular week, or I didn’t complete it that week. Test the wording of your goal to make sure it is something you can actually mark off as complete.

3. The third key for me was clearly picturing how the process of completing the goal would make me feel. The reality of starting a run on 46 year old knees is not pretty - the first few steps never feel great. But one minute into the run I always feel great, so I focus on that moment as I roll out of bed. 

4. And the fourth key is identifying why the goal matters to you. If you set a goal that doesn’t matter to you, just cross it out - you’re never going to achieve it. For me, running is about keeping fit for my family and my work, both of which I love. Running was part of a broader purpose.

As you set goals for yourself, remember to say “will” not “want”, make it something you can mark off, picture the benefits of the process, and identify why the goal matters to you.

That’s our final Leadership Today Podcast for 2018 before we take a break. We’re on track to sail through 10,000 podcast downloads around about Christmas Day. And I really appreciate the feedback people have provided about the podcast, and for you taking the time to listen. I hope it has been helpful in your leadership development. 

Over the remainder of December and into January we will be featuring four of our most popular episodes, before we kick off again in February. Best wishes for you and your loved ones for 2019.

Episode 21 - Resilience and Optimism

Summary

This week we explore the links between optimism and resilience, using the example of a terrifying real life hang gliding experience.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 21 of the Leadership Today Podcast where each week we address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges. This week we are looking at optimism and resilience.

Have you ever had a travel experience that didn’t quite go to plan. Chris Gursky certainly has. Chris recently travelled from his home in Florida to Switzerland. He was particularly keen to have a tandem hang gliding experience over the picturesque Swiss countryside, so he booked that in for the first day of his holiday. The YouTube video of his first flight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLBJA8SlH2w&t=9s) shows an excited Chris and his pilot running towards their take off from high on a mountainside. As soon as they took off though Chris and the pilot realise something has gone horribly wrong - the harness Chris is wearing is not actually clipped on to the hang glider, leaving Chris to hang on for dear life. Chris has one hand on the steering bar and one hand on the pilot for most of the flight, not sure of how long he could hold on. The pilot tries for an early landing, but is unable to control the steering while also trying to hold on to Chris, leaving the hang glider to travel over an even greater drop - some 4,000 feet from the ground. After an excruciating two minutes, the hang glider finally nears the ground travelling around 45 miles per hour, with Chris letting go just before it lands. Chris walked away with a broken wrist from the landing and a torn bicep muscle from holding on so hard. Amazingly, despite the ordeal, Chris said “I will go hang gliding again as I did not get to enjoy my first flight.”

Chris’ story demonstrates the two main elements of resilience - holding on and bouncing back. On the one hand, resilience is about your ability to withstand difficult circumstances - to hold on despite the odds - which Chris literally demonstrated during his hang gliding experience. And resilience is also about your ability to quickly bounce back from setbacks - much like Chris’ desire to go hang gliding again, despite his near death experience.

So much of our experience of life is shaped by the lens through which we view events, rather than the events themselves. Shawn Achor in his book “The Happiness Advantage” says that if researchers knew everything about your situation, they can only predict 10% of your happiness levels. Around 50% of our happiness is determined by a so-called genetic set point, with the remaining 40% being determined by our thoughts and actions which, of course, we can alter.

Our resilience links closely to our level of optimism. Martin Seligman describes this in his book “Learned Optimism”. As the title suggests, Seligman has long argued that optimism can be learned, just as early behavioural experiments with animals demonstrated that helplessness and pessimism can also be learned. Seligman outlines three ways in which optimists and pessimists differ when seeking to explain the causes and impacts of events - personalisation, permanence and pervasiveness - the three P’s.

Let’s look at these three P’s using an example of a setback. Alan is reversing his car into a tight spot in the city when he hears breaking glass and the hiss of a tyre going flat. It turns out he has backed over a glass bottle, badly puncturing a tyre on his car.

Consider the three P’s if Alan took a pessimistic view of this situation:

• Personalisation - Alan immediately blames himself - he should have noticed the bottle and been more careful while parking the car - it’s all his fault.

• Permanence - these kinds of things always happen to him - this flat tyre is going to take ages to change and then repair - it’s ruined his whole week.

• Pervasiveness - now he’s going to be late for the show tonight, which means his girlfriend is going to be unhappy with him - he’ll be grumpy at work all week, and he just can’t be bothered going to the gym in the morning now.

What about if Alan took an optimistic view of the same situation:

• Personalisation - this could have happened to anyone, and whoever left the bottle there was pretty careless - it’s not really Alan’s fault at all

• Permanence - Alan will be able to change the tyre quickly after the show - it’s a 15 minute job at the most, and doesn’t really impact his evening or week

• Pervasiveness - it’s just a flat tyre - things in his relationship and at work are going well and the rest of his life is pretty positive - it’s no big deal

You can see how an optimistic mindset would make Alan more resilient, both in the moment with the punctured tyre, but also in bouncing back from a potentially negative situation. 

Interestingly, when positive things happen, the thinking styles are reversed. The optimist will be more likely to take credit for the positive outcome, to see it as another sign of things to be grateful for, and will let the positive experience flow into other areas of their life. The pessimist, in contrast, will tend to put the positive outcome down to luck or the efforts of others, limit its impact in time, and see it as a small and contained part of their life. 

You can learn to be more optimistic in the moment. Just understanding these differences in thinking styles will make you more aware of your own thought patterns in both positive and negative situations. You can then treat your initial thoughts as opinions rather than facts. For example, if something goes wrong, you might tell yourself “you’re an idiot - you can never get anything right”. Instead of just accepting this negative thought, treat it as an opinion which can be challenged. Is it really your fault? Do you always get things wrong, or are there examples of things you do well? What are some other explanations or ways of viewing the situation? Train yourself to look at alternative explanations rather than just accepting the first negative thought that comes into your head.

There’s also the ‘boring but important’ aspects of a healthy life that help to build resilience and optimism, namely diet, sleep and exercise. Connections with friends and family also matter. As does taking the time to slow down and be grateful for all the positive things in our lives - noting down three new things each day to be grateful for is a simple and effective practice that helps us to focus on the positives in life.

This week, think of Chris Gursky and his terrifying hang gliding flight. By holding on and then quickly deciding to give hang gliding another try, Chris provides a powerful demonstration of resilience in action.

References

Martin Seligman - Learned Optimism

Shawn Achor - The Happiness Advantage

Episode 20 - Avoiding the Blame Game

Summary

As leaders, there’s always a risk of blaming people rather than processes. This week we look at a technique that helps us to avoid playing the blame game.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode twenty of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges. In this episode we’re looking at ways to avoid playing the blame game.

As leaders, there’s always a risk of blaming people rather than processes. Something goes wrong and the first thing we want to identify is who is to blame. After all, we’re responsible for the processes, so there’s a built-in desire to protect ourselves by blaming some incompetent or malicious individual rather than our wonderfully crafted systems. Blaming people is a pretty natural way of defending ourselves and maintaining our self esteem. However, it’s not a great way of building trust, getting to the root cause of problems or improving performance. If a leader is constantly blaming their people, you have to wonder - who hired these people, and who has been managing their performance? It’s the same leader who’s now playing the blame game.

When leaders play the blame game, it leads to fear, and fear leads to cover ups, and cover ups lead to increased risk. Who would raise a concern when they know there’s a risk of being blamed and all the negative consequences that come with that? The team quickly learn the importance of sweeping things under the carpet. And that seems fine in the short term, until the issues mount up and are impossible to ignore.

So, as leaders, it can be helpful to have a technique that allows us to get to the root cause of problems without automatically blaming people.

One simple tool is called 5 whys, originally pioneered by Sakichi Toyoda as part of the Toyota Production System. While it was initially conceived as an engineering method, it works equally well on any sort of problem you’re likely to encounter in the workplace. As a result, it has been incorporated into a broad range of continuous improvement methodologies.

To use the 5 whys approach, you start with the problem, then look for the preceding cause of the problem by asking ‘why’ - why did the problem occur. The idea being that after you’ve worked backwards by asking ‘why’ five times, you should be at or pretty close to the root cause of the problem. One of the principles is that you can’t have human error as the root cause - instead, you need to focus on the process, not the people. 5 whys is fact driven and logical - it’s about evidence rather than opinions. This takes a lot of the heat out of the approach.

Let’s look at an example to bring the 5 whys approach to life. You hang up the phone from a disgruntled customer. They’ve just visited your local store to find their favourite item was out of stock. To make things worse, they had actually called the store the day before to confirm the item would be in stock, and were told new stock was arriving overnight and would be there the next day. Now they’re going to take their business elsewhere. Your natural inclination is to ring the store manager and tell them off for letting the customer down by not keeping enough stock and overpromising to the customer - a classic blame game response. Instead you call the store manager and try to figure out the root cause.

1. Why was the store out of stock? Because the scheduled order hadn’t arrived.

2. Why did the scheduled order not arrive? Because the delivery truck broke down on the way to the store.

3. Why did the delivery truck break down? Because of a broken fan belt.

4. Why did the fan belt break? Because the truck hadn’t been serviced.

5. Why hadn’t the truck been scheduled? Because there wasn’t a schedule in place for truck servicing.

The lack of a schedule for servicing our fleet of trucks was the root cause for the stock outage.

It turned out the root cause didn’t have anything to do with the store manager - the problem was in an entirely different part of the organisation. The risk now is that we try to track down who is responsible for truck servicing schedules and blame them. Instead, a much more constructive approach is to look at this as a shared problem, and something that can be avoided in the future through continuous improvement. In fact, fixing the truck servicing might help to avoid a whole range of other problems in the future - ones that wouldn’t have been avoided if we had just berated the store manager.

Now, 5 whys as a technique is not perfect. For example, it tends to uncover one root cause, when there may be several. And there’s nothing magical about 5 whys - it might only take 3 whys, or perhaps 10 whys to get to the root cause. And sometimes the problem is a person. But the principle of looking at processes and systems first before blaming people is one that any leader can bring to their approach.

Episode 19 - Intent Versus Impact

As leaders, we almost always have great intentions, but our intent isn’t always the same as our impact. In this episode we explore three principles for leaders when thinking about intent versus impact.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 19 of the Leadership Today podcast - it’s great to have you join us today. I really appreciate those who have taken the time to share, rate and review the podcast. Here at Leadership Today our mission is “Enabling thousands of leaders to achieve results through people”, so it’s great to see the global reach of the podcast continue to grow. Today we’re looking at intent versus impact. 

As leaders, we almost always have great intentions - our intent is typically positive. However, if you’ve been leading for a while, you will recognise there are times when people might misunderstand your intent - that your intent is not the same as your impact. And that creates problems for us - it leads to miscommunication and can create distrust. 

Joseph Luft and Harri Ingham were studying group dynamics in the mid 1950s - exploring how we see ourselves versus how others see us. They developed a process that involved individuals choosing words they thought best described themselves from a list of 56 adjectives. Their peers did the same. 

Not surprisingly, they found that some words overlapped between the individual and their peers and some didn’t. They could then sort each word into one of four quadrants, based on whether a characteristic was known or unknown by the individual, and known or unknown by others. 

When the words lined up, this meant the characteristics were known to self and known to others - Luft and Ingham described this quadrant as the arena - others have called it public or open. 

Then you have words people chose for themselves that others didn’t choose - these characteristics were known to self but not others - this quadrant was called hidden, like the person was wearing a mask. 

Finally, there were words others chose to describe someone that the person didn’t choose for themselves - this is known as a blind spot. It’s also where intent versus impact gets interesting. When there's a misalignment between your intent and impact, you could argue that it’s just others’ perceptions, but those perceptions are their reality whether we agree with them or not. And a blind spot can be positive or negative - you are just as likely to be blind to a strength as you are to be blind to a weakness.

When we think about intent versus impact, there are three principles for leaders:

1. If you want people to understand you, make your intent clear

2. If you see people doing strange things, take the time to understand their intent

3. Use feedback to let people know the impact they’re having

Let’s look at the first principle - If you want people to understand you, make your intent clear.

I was working with a leader who had received some feedback that his team saw his leadership style as highly directive, and almost never coaching. As I worked with him, he just couldn’t understand this feedback - he thought he was coaching his staff all the time. I asked him for an example of how he coached his team, and he said “Well, I coached one of my team members earlier today. I was walking past his desk and noticed he was doing something in Excel in a pretty inefficient way. I knew a much simpler way, so I asked him to move across. I pulled up a seat in front of his computer, and then showed him the easier way. I then suggested he do it that way next time. I coached him.” It was pretty easy to see where the impact of being directive was coming from. I asked him to replay the story, but this time from his team member’s perspective. What would it feel like to have your boss move you to one side then start working on your computer in front of your colleagues? How might the team member have interpreted the situation? He soon saw how his positive intentions could have been taken in a negative way. Even if he had done exactly the same thing, but shared his intent - that is, that he actually thought this team member was doing a great job, and wanted to help him become more efficient so he could go home earlier - the impact would have been entirely different. It’s important to make ourselves known to others, to let them into our head, and to share our intent. This will lead to greater alignment between how others see us and how we see ourselves.

Now the second principle - If you see people doing strange things, take the time to understand their intent. Our home used to have vinyl floor tiles in our living room. I walked in one day to find about a square metre of these tiles had been lifted up and placed in a pile by a combination of our three sons. They had managed to get under the edge of one tile, lifting it up, which then gave them access to several other tiles that they could then pull up, and it quickly escalated from there. Several of the tiles had cracked in the process. Now, clearly, I was pretty frustrated by this wanton destruction. It seemed like the kids were trying to vandalise and destroy the house. But I asked them - what were they trying to do? They told me that they were simply trying to build a tower out of the tiles. Understanding their intent helped me to explain their behaviour. It didn’t remove all the frustration, but it did help me to understand why they were doing what they were doing. The same is true in the workplace. People are typically logical and rational in the behaviour - it’s the perceptions of situations that often differ. So when people are doing something strange - failing to get on board with an initiative, focusing on the wrong things, whatever it might be - that the time to explore their intent. Often you will find that it’s actually a miscommunication or misunderstanding that lies at the root of the issue.

The third principle is - Use feedback to let people know the impact they’re having. As a leader you’re in a unique position to help others to decrease their blind spots. And I would encourage you to particularly focus on helping people to uncover their strengths. One of the greatest satisfactions I’ve had as a leader is encouraging people to do things that they initially didn’t think they could. I could see strengths in them that they couldn’t see in themselves.

Intent versus impact is a powerful way of improving your influencing, understanding others, and helping others to develop. Try these three leadership principles this week and let me know what impact you make.

Episode 18 - Don't Ask for a Mentor

Having a mentor provides a wide range of benefits beyond development, including higher pay, more promotions and greater career satisfaction. But asking for a mentor isn’t always easy or the best approach. 

Transcript

Welcome to episode 18 of the Leadership Today podcast. Today we’re looking at finding a mentor, and why asking someone to be your mentor may not be the best approach.

Let’s start by defining mentoring. In a mentoring relationship the focus is on development of the person being mentored in a particular set of skills or capabilities, by engaging with a mentor who has demonstrated experience and expertise in these areas. Sometimes the individuals arrange the mentoring directly with each other, and at other times organisations either support or drive these pairings.

Reseach suggests that the benefits of having a mentor go beyond the individual’s development. When compared to those without mentors, those being mentored had higher remuneration, were offered more promotions, and they demonstrated greater career satisfaction and commitment.

And mentoring also has benefits for the mentor as well. Mentors report feeling more positive about the organisation and their senior leadership. Mentors also experience greater levels of job satisfaction.

Given mentoring is such a win win, why don’t we see more mentoring in the workplace? Here are some reasons:

• People are often afraid to ask for a mentor - plucking up the courage can be hard, particularly when we recognise it’s such a big commitment from the mentor

• Mentors are reluctant to commit time - the traditional model of mentoring often soaks up a lot of time, sometimes outliving its original usefulness

• Mentors may already have someone to mentor - they may therefore be reluctant to commit to a second or third person

So my advice - if you want a mentor, don’t ask for one - at least not straight away. Here’s a process I recommend:

1. Identify the areas you want to develop - be really clear about what mentoring is going to address

2. Identify a range of mentors that could help - it may be more than one person, and you can draw on your networks to suggest people

3. Request brief meetings with the potential mentors of around 20 to 30 minutes each - be clear that you have an area you’re interested in developing, and would like a conversation about their advice and guidance in this area - being willing to use phone or video calls will broaden the potential range of mentors you can access

4. Assuming they’re okay to meet up and the meeting goes well, ask if they would be open to another meeting in two months time

5. Don’t waste their time - turn up prepared with questions, take notes and stop asking for more meetings once you’ve learned what you want to learn

Mentors are great. And, while it sounds counterintuitive, if you really want a mentor, don’t start by asking for one. As always, I’ve included the references used in this podcast in the episode notes.

References

Allen TD1, Eby LT, Poteet ML, Lentz E, Lima L. (2004) Career benefits associated with mentoring for protégeé: a meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology Feb;89(1):127-36

Rajashi Ghosh & Thomas G. Reio Jr. (2013) Career benefits associated with mentoring for mentors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Vocational Behavior 83 (2013) 106–116

Sange, Rabiya; Srivasatava, R. K. (2012) Employee Engagement and Mentoring: An Empirical Study of Sales Professionals. Synergy (0973-8819);Jan2012, Vol. 10 Issue 1, p37

Episode 17 - Prisoners and Performance Ratings

What can prisoners teach us about performance ratings? And how can we better measure performance and support development as leaders? Check out the research and some ideas that will help improve the way you lead.

Transcript

Welcome to episode 17 of the Leadership Today podcast - let’s dive straight in.

There’s a great piece of research out of England that involved people who had been jailed on violence and robbery offences rating themselves on a range of traits. Initially they were asked to rate themselves against the ‘average prisoner’. As we see in many studies of this sort, the prisoners rated themselves more positively than their peers - they saw themselves, for example, as more kind, dependable, honest and law abiding than the average prisoner. They were then asked to rate themselves on the same traits when compared to the average member of the public - and it’s here that the results become even more interesting. The prisoners saw themselves as more moral than the average person. They also saw themselves as more kind, more self-controlled, more compassionate, more generous, more dependable, more trustworthy and even more honest than the average person in the community. The only trait they didn’t rate themselves so high on was how law abiding they were, which makes sense given they were imprisoned for breaking the law. However, even then they rated themselves as on par with the average person on the street.

This over-rating isn’t just limited to prisoners - people in a work setting are also notoriously poor at rating their own performance. Of the hundreds of people I’ve surveyed in my own research, the same pattern comes up again and again - 85% of people think their performance is above average, with 15% of people seeing themselves as just average. Not a single person I’ve surveyed has ever rated their performance as below average.

This creates a range of challenges for leaders. If the vast majority of people over-rate their performance when compared to others, how do we manage their performance? Do you want to be the leader that runs around shattering these self-delusions that are so common? Probably not.

Let’s take another angle. I want you to think back over your own career, and identify some points when would you have rated yourself most positively. For me, I have been most positive about my own performance when I wasn’t being stretched or challenged. I felt confident and on top of things. I felt like I was really delivering for the business. Interestingly, that probably also lines up with the times when I wasn’t as engaged in my work - now it’s not like I didn’t like my work, but it was just easy. I felt like I was contributing and doing my part, but didn’t need to try too hard. In contrast, as I think about the times when I stretched and challenged myself, my views on my performance dropped. It was in those moments that I doubted whether I could deliver what was being asked of me - did I have what it would take to perform? It was in these moments that I needed support and encouragement, because development feels hard. Having a leader that challenges you, but also supports and encourages you, is a great way to take your performance to the next level.

But it’s not just individuals that have trouble accurately rating their own performance. Other research shows that leaders aren’t that great at rating people on performance either. Researchers found two factors led supervisors to rate individuals more positively - one factor was if they thought the person was similar to them, and the second factor was when they liked them. So as a leader I’m likely to rate you more positively if you are like me, and if I like you. And there’s an associated risk of under rating people that we feel aren’t like us, or that we don’t like.  

Here are some ideas to help with these challenges around providing feedback on performance:

1. Get out of the habit of rating your own and others’ performance relative to others - instead focus on the requirements of the job, the objectives and the progress the individual is making. This will help maintain that challenge to keep progressing and improving, rather than getting caught up in comparisons.

2. As a leader, make sure you are combining challenge with support - work with your team to set challenging goals that keep people moving forward in their performance. But also recognise that when people are learning something new or challenging, their confidence is likely to drop. It’s in those moments that they need extra support and encouragement.

3. Invite and provide feedback - having a culture where feedback is encouraged will help people to more accurately evaluate and refine their performance.

Thanks for listening and for supporting the podcast. It has been great to hear how the content has been helpful.If you do want to keep in contact, go to the connect page at our website, leadership.today. There you can join our email list, and connect via LinkedIn and Facebook. I look forward to speaking with you next week.

Research

Sedikides C, Meek R, Alicke MD, and Taylor S (2014). Behind bars but above the bar: Prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than non-prisoners. The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society

Sandy J. Wayne and Robert C. Liden (1995) Effects of Impression Management on Performance Ratings: A Longitudinal Study. The Academy of Management Journal Vol. 38, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 232-260

Episode 16 - Operating in Uncertainty

In this week’s podcast we explore what leaders can learn from the way surgical teams manage complexity.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode sixteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges.

Last week we dipped our toes into the waters of complexity, looking at how the storming stage of team development is better thought of as an ongoing process to be managed.

This week we are extending on that theme of operating in uncertainty, seeing what leaders can learn from the way surgical teams manage complexity.

As leaders we operate in a complex world where we are constantly presented with opportunities and threats. Some describe it as a VUCA world - an acronym that characterises modern conditions as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The term VUCA can be traced back to the 1980s where it was used in US Army War College training to describe the conditions faced by soldiers - where the enemy is not always clear and traditional approaches may not work.

In this VUCA world we still need to manage tasks, processes and people within our teams. But we also need strategies that look beyond our team if we are to survive and thrive.

The operating room where surgical teams work is a complex environment. The human body itself is complex and variable, and we’re still learning more every day about how our systems work and interrelate. There’s complex equipment being used, and emergency situations to be managed. There’s input from various specialties - surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and doctors - people who are highly qualified and full of opinions. Often times there are new teams performing surgery that may not have worked together before. This can lead to a lack of consistency, assumptions and disagreements. From a group dynamics perspective, this sounds a lot like the conditions for storming - and you don’t want storming during an operation. As a consequence of this complexity, surprises occur, things are missed and mistakes are made. This leads to variable outcomes for patients.

A World Health Organisation initiative sought to address these concerns. They tracked the outcomes of thousands of operations across eight hospitals in eight countries, gaining an initial baseline. They then implemented a 19-item surgical safety checklist - just 19 items that the surgical team would work through a check off. It was an initiative inspired by how pilots and ground crews manage the complexity of air travel through checklists.

So how does a checklist help? One example is the risk of people not speaking up during a surgical procedure, even when they see something going wrong. After all, they may not know everyone in the room, and may not see it as their role to intervene. As a result, the checklist includes a step where all team members introduce themselves to each other by name and role. Further down the checklist, the surgeon flags how long the case will take, anticipated blood loss, and any non-routine steps. This all helps to bring everyone together, building clarity and helping to preempt issues that might emerge.

The results of implementing the checklist were dramatic - the rate of death was reduced by over 40%, and complications were reduced by over a third.

So it would be natural to assume that this 19 item check list would be mandated for use everywhere. However, the researchers stressed how Important it was for local hospitals to tailor the checklist to meet local needs. That could include adding or removing items from the list.  They recognised that risks, resources and cultures differ from hospital to hospital. Despite the dramatic results, they were quick to recognise that the true value of their findings was in the principle of having a checklist, rather than the exact checklist procedure itself.

And then there’s the people factor. Given how dramatic the results were, you would think people would be thrilled to use the checklist. However 20% of surgical staff thought even a 19 item check list took too long. Interestingly, of that same group, 93% indicated that they would want the checklist used if they were having surgery. As with any change, there’s always opportunities to streamline by engaging people in the process - helping to address their concerns and involving them in refinements. It’s important to help people to appreciate the principle, rather than being obsessed about the procedure.

There are a number of lessons for leaders from this study in how we navigate through a VUCA world:

1. Always improve - even in the world of modern surgery there was still an opportunity for dramatic change, and even 1% improvements add up over time

2. Look outside your field - in the research surgical teams applied lessons learned from air travel - maybe there are similar lessons that apply in your industry

3. Identify principles - these provide ways to operate in the grey, and should be developed by incorporating input and feedback

4. Principles not procedures - rather than rolling out more and more procedures, we are usually better off communicating a principle that applies more broadly

5. When communicating a principle, start with the reasons why it matters - if people don’t understand the reasons for a new way of working, they will often block the change or just avoid it

I hope you found that helpful. Let me know what you think via our website leadership.today, or feel free to leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Reference

A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population - January 29, 2009 N Engl J Med 2009; 360:491-499 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119

Episode 15 - Do Teams Still Form, Storm, Norm and Perform?

Over 50 years ago Bruce Tuckman described four stages of team development - forming, storming, norming and performing. This week we explore whether these stages still apply, and the implications for leading in an increasingly complex world.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode fifteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges. 

Now if you ask a leader to describe the stages of development a team goes through, they will most likely say the now famous words - forming, storming, norming, performing. It was over 50 years ago that Bruce Tuckman originally described these four stages in small group formation. He later worked with Mary Jensen to add a fifth stage - adjourning (which unfortunately doesn’t rhyme quite so well with the other four stages when forced through an Australian accent - and a big shout out to our many international listeners who have spent the last 14 episodes trying to work out what accent I have - there’s your answer). But does this model still apply today? And what’s the relevance for the way we lead?

First, let’s do a quick overview and reminder of the five stages:

• Forming - a team first comes together, they orient themselves to the task, establish relationships, test boundaries around ground rules and behaviours - at this point people are usually positive, polite if not a little unsure.

• Storming - a lack of clarity around roles and ways of operating means this stage is marked by interpersonal conflict, lack of unity, polarised views - at this point people often actively or passively resist forming into a team - in fact the team may even fall apart at this point.

• Norming - achieve greater cohesion as roles, norms and ways of operating are established - people seek to maintain the group and find effective ways to work together.

• Performing - Tuckman saw the group at this point as having effectively “solved” interpersonal problems and become a “problem-solving instrument” - roles are flexible and functional, structure is clear and fixed, with shared commitment and effort towards the task.

• Adjourning - winding up the team - may be some sadness as people need to let go of the role they’ve had and go their separate ways.

So where did these stages come from? Tuckman’s work was based on a literature review process rather than direct research. He wanted to bring together various ways of thinking about how teams develop and become productive. The studies he looked at were based on therapy groups, training groups, and laboratory experiments. Through this process, he was able to identify common themes - thus the initial four stages.

It is a theoretical model that has proved helpful in practice, and has mostly held up under research scrutiny. The framework has been widely applied and proved to be highly effective in encouraging further exploration of team performance. 

However, there has been some more recent disagreement around the storming stage and where it fits, or even if it is a distinct stage at all. Even Tuckman’s original paper highlighted mixed evidence around the storming stage, with some researchers combining elements of storming with both the forming and norming stages.

Not surprisingly, a common question from leaders is “Can’t we just skip the storming stage altogether?” The answer is maybe in the short term, but not forever. In fact some researchers have conceptualised storming as the management of conflict and difference that occurs across the life of the team, and I think that’s a more helpful way to think about it.

Whether storming is a discrete stage or something that rears its head occasionally, the storm is never far away. And the storm is not necessarily generated within the team. There’s greater awareness now that any team is constantly being barraged with opportunities and threats as part of a larger complex system. No team works in isolation - it’s constantly being tilted, nudged, and pushed off balance.

I served as part of a very effective leadership team in a professional services firm as we sailed directly into the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Each of us had weathered recessions and downturns before - we had each seen the market move up and down - but the speed and scale of the GFC impact was still difficult. The GFC was a complex environment in which to operate, where we couldn’t fully shield the team and business. The ways of working we established became strained, and we needed to work hard at revising our norms and maintaining our relationships. We were able to do that successfully by changing the way we worked in terms of task, people and process. If we had just focused on our team and ignored the environment around us, we would have failed. It’s a good example of how we had to step back into that storming stage to then create some norms and agreed ways of operating to help us to move forward.

So here are some practical ideas for you as a leader:

1. Don’t just focus on the task - make sure as a team leader you place equal attention on the people and the process. A very powerful question to start with and return to is ‘How can we best work together?’ 

2. Negotiate through difference - conflict, if well managed, is your friend. But conflict management needs willing and skilled individuals, along with effective team processes.

3. Be attuned to your surroundings - keep a weathered eye on the horizon for opportunities and threats. Build a network outside the team that can help feed in information, advice and support.

4. Influence beyond the team - shape the world around you. Be proactive, not just reactive within the broader system in which you operate.

I hope these ideas help you to improve the effectiveness of the teams you lead and are a part of. Next week I’ll be expanding on this idea of operating in uncertainty, drawing on lessons from the operating theatre. See you then.

References

Tuckman, B. Developmental Sequence in Small Groups. Psychological Bulletin 1965, Vol. 63, No. 6, 384-399

Tuckman, B. and Jensen, M. (1977). Stages of Small-Group Development Revisited. Group & Organization Management, 2(4), pp.419-427. 

Denise A. Bonebright 40 years of storming: a historical review of Tuckman’s model of small group development

 Human Resource Development International Vol. 13, No. 1, February 2010, 111–120

Episode 14 - Leadership First Impressions

Research demonstrates that 90% of the initial impression we form about people is based on two factors - warmth and competence. It also turns out these two factors are difficult to combine. So how do we demonstrate both warmth and competence as leaders?

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode fourteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges. 

This week we are looking at leadership first impressions.

It turns out that 90% of the initial impression we form about a person is around two things - their warmth and their competence. In other words - do I connect with you, and do you know what you’re doing?

It’s important to note that warmth isn’t primarily about being liked - it’s about making a real connection. That you are a real human being that people can relate to on an emotional level.

Competence is about knowing what you’re doing. That you are a leader who is skilled and capable - someone others can respect.

These factors produce two stereotypes of leaders that perhaps you can identify with:

• The first is the competent but cold leader - they’re all business, great at what they do, but they just seem to struggle to connect with people. People respect them, but they may not put in an extra effort for them.

• Then there’s the warm and friendly but not-so-competent leader - they are great at bringing people around them, but those people gradually drift away when they figure out the leader isn’t up to the task.

These stereotypes assume that competence and warmth sit at opposite ends of a spectrum. That a leader can only be all about results, or all about people, but not both. And many leaders assume that this is indeed the case.

So if they’re forced to choose between the two, it’s perhaps not surprising that many leaders go for the “respected but not connected” version of competence without warmth. That flows into how they communicate and interact with people. Indeed, they have to guard their image of competence, so letting people into who they are as a human being is a risk - and a risk they see as not worth taking.

How does that come across to others? People who take on this competent but cold combination often try to present themselves as an expert. And there’s no shortage of experts - LinkedIn has nearly 6 million people who list themselves as experts in various fields. In fact, LinkedIn lists so many people with “keynote speaker” in their title, that to give each of them just five gigs a year would require there to be over 3,000 keynote speeches every single day. Some people really latch on to the need to lead with their expertise.

The good news is that you can combine the two - it is possible to be seen as both warm and competent. The research suggests that it is tricky, but also possible. And the research also suggests that you should lead with warmth. That making a connection with people matters, and provides a foundation to then demonstrate your competence. 

I worked alongside a leader who embodied exactly this combination. He was a lovely guy to work with, but also filled you with confidence that he knew exactly what he was doing. He was incredibly calm in a crisis - his body language and tone of voice even made him seem relaxed. Even when things were going horribly wrong, he was interested in others’ views, and keen to resolve the issue. He didn’t just remain calm himself, but he helped others to calm down. This allowed people to focus on the problem and work towards a positive outcome. They weren’t worried about the leader and his response - they trusted him, they felt connected to him, and they knew he valued maintaining and building connections with his team, even when they made a mistake.

As Amy Cuddy and her fellow researchers put it - “Before people decide what they think of your message, they decide what they think of you.”

So here are some ideas of how you can combine both warmth and competence in the way that you present.

1. Be yourself. Be a real human being that turns up to work with strengths, weaknesses, interests and concerns. Don’t try to be perfect, but do try to become better.

2. Be interested in others. Take the time to understand where they are coming from - their interests, even their hopes and dreams. 

3. Let people into your head. Share your thoughts and emotions. Sometimes the calm person can appear as if they don’t care enough. Sometimes trying to be friendly can appear flighty. Don’t let people have to guess where you’re coming from and what’s driving your behaviour - let them into your head.

4. Be prepared to present your capabilities with confidence. Try to capture in one or two sentences what you bring and what makes you unique. Then think about how you present that authentic image of you to others.

5. And lastly - get feedback. Ask people about how approachable you are, and what you might do to improve this. Ask for feedback about what makes you appear more and less competent.

I hope you find these ideas helpful as you continue to improve the way you lead. As always, if you’re interested in the research, the references are listed in the transcript at our website - leadership.today

And thanks again for those who have taken the time to rate, review and share the podcast with others. It’s great to hear your feedback and to see the hundreds of people who are downloading the podcast each week. We’ll see you next week.

Research used for this episode:

A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition

Fiske, Susan T; Cuddy, Amy J C; Glick, Peter; Xu, Jun.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Washington Vol. 82, Iss. 6,  (Jun 2002): 878-902.

Connect, Then Lead. To exert influence, you must balance competence with warmth. by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffing. Harvard Business Review July–August 2013.

Episode 13 - Control your Email (Before it Controls You).

Email is a great tool that can also be a huge distraction. Research shows that if we don't control our inbox, it will end up controlling us. This week we look at some ways to tackle that.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode thirteen of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges. 

This week we are looking at gaining control over our email inbox. It’s easy to forget that email is a relatively new addition to the workplace. When I entered the workforce in the 1990s, I was lucky to receive 5 emails in a day. There was no way anyone would send confidential information by email - it was seen as much less risky and more convenient to fax or mail a document.

As leaders, we’re still figuring out how to make the most out of email, instant messaging, and services like Slack, while avoiding the downside distractions.

You see it at conferences and training sessions - the leader who is constantly checking their phone and then dashing out during every break to feverishly respond to emails and messages. It’s as if their team can’t survive even a few hours without them, let alone a day. In some organisations its endemic - as people walk into a room for a meeting, they all set up their laptops, continuing to smash through their inbox while providing only a minimal amount of attention to what’s happening in the room. It’s like we’re constantly skating across the surface of multiple tasks rather than really applying ourselves to the things that matter.

People approach the challenge of email in different ways. I once interviewed a senior executive and asked about how they manage competing priorities. The example they provided involved how they dealt with the hundreds of emails in their inbox when they returned from holidays. They explained that it was quite simple - they just selected all emails and hit delete. They argued that if an issue was important enough, surely someone would get back to them. I still don’t know if that approach was brilliant or negligent.

Here’s what some recently published research (http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0000343) tells us about email use:

• Researchers found that knowledge workers spend 28% of their workweek reading and responding to email. 

• Staff at Microsoft reported that their work was interrupted by email alerts an average of 4 times per hour, with each interruption causing a further 5 minute delay to their other work. Those delays add up to a third of their time, or 2.5 hours per day. 

• And it may be even worse than that - researchers found the average worker checks email 90 times per day - that’s once every 5 minutes - and that it takes 1 minute to resume work after checking email. So that’s another 90 minutes which isn’t including the time taken on the email itself. Bouncing from email to email across a day makes it practically impossible to complete any work requiring concentration or creative thought.

• Those with high email demands where email is not central to their job experience a lack of progress. They feel like they’re just not getting ahead.

• As a result, researchers found that those with low self-control ended up focusing on routine management activities rather than leadership. Reacting to emails made them a less effective leader.

It’s little surprise then that leaders I work with typically list ‘email’ and ‘meetings’ as the top two impediments to getting their work done. They feel the stress. They know their being reactive. They see the important being smashed by the urgent. They know they have a fixed amount of time every day, and that email is getting in the way of the activities that allow leaders to be effective. But they’re not sure what to do about it.

Here are seven ideas to take charge of your email:

1. Make a mental shift - recognise that your email inbox is effectively a summary of other people’s to-do lists. As a leader, your inbox probably doesn’t contain your most important work.

2. Switch off alerts on everything - your computer, phone, watch - anything that prompts you that a new email or message has arrived.

3. Instead of checking email 90 times, try 4 focused times. Schedule time in your calendar and use the time you have allotted, then get back to your other work.

4. Don’t just hit reply straight away - assess whether a conversation is needed. Try phone calls for a day. Or try grouping issues together so you can have one conversation about multiple topics. The fewer emails you send, the fewer you get back.

5. Set standards - help people to consider when it is okay to reply all to everyone cc’d, that clear subject lines help, and to put requests at the start of emails rather than being hidden in mounds of text. One organisation I’ve seen sends people a report each month outlining where the individual sits in terms of the number of emails they send. There isn’t any judgement - but letting someone know that they send more emails than 90% of others in this organisation usually reduces the number of emails they send. 

6. If your team can’t operate without you, you probably need to vary the way you lead. Delegate more, be clear about accountabilities, and let them know you trust them to deal with issues that arise.

7. Keep experimenting and trying new approaches - I experiment with multiple to-do lists and approaches to organising my day each year, refining my approach as I go. It’s not always big changes - there’s a lot of power in continuous refinement and improvement.

Email is like any tool - it’s not inherently good or bad. We need a plan and approach that works for us - one that leaves us with a sense of control, rather than being a victim of our inbox. This week think about your approach to email - and take control before it controls you.

Episode 12 - The Best Thing About Working Here? It's the People...

When you ask employees about the best thing about the place where they work, they often say "the people". Here are four ideas of how leaders can build connections and collaboration at work.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode 12 of the Leadership Today podcast. My name is Andrew Beveridge, and thanks for joining me.

If you ask employees what they see as the best part about working here you’ll often hear “It’s the people”. Not the pay, not the job, not the location - the people. The need to belong and be connected to others is as powerful a motivator at work as it is in life. It’s what Deci and Ryan in their classic motivational research call ‘relatedness’. 

On top of this, research by Google found the two most important factors for team effectiveness are:

1. Psychological safety - Can we take risks in this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed? 

2. Dependability - Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?

Connections matter - people are motivated when they have a sense of belonging - that this is this a place where they can be themselves, where they can help others, and where others are reliable and want to help them. 

This need for connections sits in a broader societal context. We are at a point in history where, thanks to technology, people have more connections than ever, while simultaneously feeling more isolated and lonely.  Research shows that on average we have fewer people than ever to depend on when we need help. Sociologists tracked this pattern in America between 1985 and 2004. They saw the number of people that said they had no one at all they could confide in triple over that time, while the average number of confidents people had reduced from three to two. 

And our office environments haven’t helped. The open plan offices that were supposed to help build connections turn out to do the opposite. Recent research into two organisations that moved to open plan saw a 70% reduction in face to face conversations, coupled with an increase in email use of between 22% to 50%. It’s not surprising then that other research demonstrates open plan offices also increase sick leave.

I believe that fostering a culture where people can belong and support each other is at the core of collaboration. And in an environment of ever accelerating change, organisations need collaboration more than ever. 

So what can leaders do to help people to feel like they belong? 

Here are four suggestions:

1. Office layouts matter - you want to involve your people in helping to building a physical environment that combines places for quiet reflection and deep work, with other areas that encourage connection and discussion. Making it a personal and warm place will go a long way to help encourage those connections. 

2. Consider agile work principles - people coming together from across the organisation to tackle a problem or opportunity, and then disbanding once that opportunity is advanced or problem solved.

3. Social connection - just remember that having fun and connecting people with each other is not a waste of time. Have your people generate some ideas around that - what are some ways that we can build those social connections at work.

4. As leaders, we want to demonstrate those connections, we want to facilitate connections, and we want to discuss the importance of connection - always reinforcing that need to connect.

So in summary, connections matter, not just at work but in life in general. I look forward to hearing some of your ideas of how you’ve built connections at work, and how that’s made an impact on the way you operate.

Well that’s the end of this podcast. I’m looking forward to joining you again next week to discuss another challenge at work, and some practical ideas about things we can do to improve that as leaders. 

Links to research in this episode:

http://repositorio.minedu.gob.pe/bitstream/handle/123456789/2958/Intrinsic%20and%20Extrinsic%20Motivations%20Classic%20Definitions%20and%20New%20Directions.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/

http://happierhuman.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/P13.-Social-Isolation-in-America-Changes-in-Core-Discussion-Networks-over-Two-Decades.pdf

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/1753/20170239#fn-2

http://workplaceohs.com.au/hazards/work-environment/analysis/open-plan-offices-increase-the-risk-of-sick-leave#.W59daf4zbOQ

Episode 11 - Want to Keep Your Best People? Help to Build their Resume.

This week we are looking at how to motivate and retain your best people by helping to build their resume.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to episode eleven of the Leadership Today podcast. Each week we provide practical advice to address some of today’s biggest leadership challenges. 

This week we are looking at how to motivate and retain your best people by helping to build their resume.

It’s no secret that leaders are struggling to retain their best people. Recent studies (https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australian-jobs-turnover-churn-robert-half-2018-6) suggest that staff turnover rates are on the increase. It’s easy to see how repeated corporate downsizing has taught the current workforce that loyalty may not be reciprocated by their employer. Add to this increasingly high levels of education and mobility, and you have a recipe for high turnover.

So what should leaders do? Is keeping your best people all about table tennis. bean bags, and fruit boxes? Well, making offices more ‘cool’ only goes so far. Some organisations try to take these surface elements from companies that are known for their ability to attract and retain employees and inject them into their own offices. Like all transplants though, they’re often rejected. Cool offices are an outworking of the culture of organisations – they’re not the driver of the culture. 

And we know that pay isn’t the answer. My own research indicates that 85% of people think their performance is above average, while only 3% believe they’re overpaid. A full 48% of people think they aren’t paid enough. It’s almost impossible to make the majority of your people happy about their pay when the vast majority think they are above average performers.

Here is one practical way to help retain employees. While it sounds counterintuitive, helping workers to grow and build their resume can make them more likely to stay with your organisation. That’s right - making people more employable can make them less likely to leave. 

As we discussed last week, there are four main factors that motivate people at work - purpose, development, connections and autonomy. Helping to build someone’s resume directly addresses the development motivator. People are motivated when they feel competent at what they’re doing, and when they can build the capabilities that matter to them over time.

As a leader, you can consciously help your people to develop skills and experience that matter to them. Here are three ideas you might want to try:

1. During your regular meetings with your people, make sure you set aside some time to identify what further development is of interest, and help to make that happen. It might be a training course. Or it might be using your networks to help pair them up with someone more experienced in their field for a once off mentor meeting. Or it might be an experience - something new that will stretch them.  

2. Spend time together looking back at the previous month or quarter to identify the new skills and experience that they have gained. Sometimes people don’t notice the development they’re experiencing unless they stop and reflect. Making sure you discuss this helps to build awareness of the development that’s already happening. 

3. Help them to summarise this experience in a way that will fit into a resume or LinkedIn profile. I’ve had several team members where we actually worked together on their resume as part of our regular catch up meetings. 

By highlighting and increasing their capability, you will be able to demonstrate that staying with the organisation will have value for their development and employability. And the approach works across all employees - it’s not just for those new to the workforce. Even as people approach retirement, providing them with skills they’re interested in that will help them to pick up part time roles (if that's what they want) will also be attractive.

Achieving this at an organisational level requires leaders who can have skilled discussions with employees. This is likely to involve some investment in development for managers as well. But, as we’ve seen, this development may also help to retain your best leaders.