November 2010

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What Kind of Leaders Will Your Children Be?

November 24, 2010 in Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

Parents are the earliest and most influential influences on a child. Their examples profoundly affect the kind of leaders they become. Here are some things I have learned and take the time to think about while raising my 10 year old daughter.

Take time to know your child. Working with a child’s personality, a parent needs to learn to develop that child’s individual traits and abilities and sometimes temper strengths that left unchecked would become a liability. For example, an assertive, outgoing personality is a great trait in a leader, but without self-control it can be seen as overly aggressive and controlling.

Talking to Kids
Take the time to point out where they can learn from the example of others. Use examples and outcomes of decisions of both right and wrong approaches to situations. Teach them cause and effect. Choices have consequences.

Take the time to understand what problems and issues your child is dealing with and then guide them to the right decisions by applying the appropriate principles. By instilling principles rather than pat answers to problems, you will give them tools to work with that they can apply over and over again in their life.

Take the time to praise them when they make the right choices and gently show them the choice they missed when they go astray. Give them age appropriate responsibilities and let them stand or fall on their choices.

Take the time to involve them in family activities and work. This will help them learn teamwork (sharing and considering others) and a good work ethic.

Why do all this? Pat Williams (senior vice president of the Orlando Magic) in his book, Coaching Your Kids to be Leaders, quotes Jackson University football coach Steve Gilbert,

I tell young people, “It feels good to be a leader!” Success and failure are part of the adventure of life. Young people need to see that good leaders are important in their community—and there are great rewards for being a good leader. Those rewards include a sense of satisfaction and a feeling that what you are doing is meaningful and significant. You don’t always win when you lead, but that’s okay. Young people should be
rewarded and encouraged for stepping up and leading, no matter whether they succeed or fail.

How Are WE doing?

November 19, 2010 in Leadership Coaching, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

How are WE doing is something teams tend to wait to do at their annual retreat, or planning event. These questions and their answers are the needed dashboard elements of a continuous dialog.  By the time you get to the planning meeting you have lost the opportunity for required change, innovation, and most importantly the continuous engagement of the WE of team.

Here a a dozen questions that can be made part of the ongoing dialog a team has together.

  1. Where are we going (our vision)?  Are we aligned in our actions?
  2. How will we work together (our values)?  How are we doing at this?
  3. Why do we exist (our purpose)?  Do  our values and vision drive this purpose?
  4. Whom do we serve?   Any changes here?  Required adjustments?
  5. What is expected of us?  Are we asking the right questions and listening?
  6. What are our performance gaps?  Can we adjust in real-time?
  7. What are our goals and priorities?  Have they shifted off track?
  8. What’s our implementation/improvement plan?  How are we doing?
  9. What skills/processes do we need to develop?  Are we making time to learn?
  10. What support is available?  Who can help, support? Are we connecting?
  11. How will we track our performance?  What does this tell us? How will we use it?
  12. How/when will we review, assess, celebrate, and refocus?

Are Your Interactions Creating High Value?

November 17, 2010 in Change Leadership, L3 Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

Interaction: a mutual or reciprocal action.  A two-way intentional effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect.

Learning to create relationship-building interactions with direct reports,colleagues, customers or stakeholders as opposed to relationship-eroding transactions, is one of the most valuable and profitable business habits you can develop.  If you can regularly turn human encounters into high value interactions , you will see your relationships grow and prosper.  Creating these high value interactions takes practice.

First let’s look at some key factors concerning interactions:

Every time you interact with a colleague, direct report or customer/stakeholder- one of three things can possibly happen:

1.   Your relationship improves
2.   Your relationship stays the same
3.   Your relationship becomes weaker

Now let’s look at the difference between transactions and productive interactions.

Transactions: Interactions that weaken or potentially damage your relationship or, at best, have no effect on your relationship.

Healthy Interactions: strengthen your relationship. Builds trust and commitment

Think about a recent exchange you had with a direct report or colleague. What effect did that exchange have on your relationship with that person?  Did it strengthen and advance the relationship?

I have found that there are five elements of a high value interaction.

1.  High Level Presence: Showing up focused as a listener first

2.  Engagement: Finding mutual interests and alignments

3.  Dialog vs. Monologue: Two-way conversations

4.  Win/Win: Focus on dual benefits for outcomes

5.  Bridges: Opportunities to open the dialog again

Strong  relationships are built one healthy interaction at a time. Create a  goal for your  next interaction with a direct report, colleague or stakeholder — your goal is to create a productive healthy interactions that advances your relationship.

What transforms transactions into an healthy interactions, saving it from the fate of becoming a less productive?

Give the 5 elements outlined above a try and they will help you plan and implement a healthy and productive interaction.

One Really Bad Habit-The Idea Shutdown!

November 12, 2010 in Change Leadership, L3 Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

I have been working with a leadership team that has a bad habit, The Idea Shutdown- they constantly shut down their colleagues ideas.  Why?  I am sure you can think of all of the reasons this happens!  I don’t want to make a long list of the reasons here.  What I want to do is show how these actions fall into specific categories.

John Kotter of the Harvard Business School did some research on this.

He came up with four common strategies that people use to shoot down leaders’ ideas:

1. fear-mongering

2. death by delay

3. confusion

4. ridicule

He goes on to detail that these attacks are typically executed through two dozen familiar questions, arguments, and comments. Any of these, alone or together, can kill a genuinely good idea.

1. We’ve been successful. Why change?

2. Money [or some other problem a proposal does not address] is the only real issue.

3. You exaggerate the problem.

4. You’re implying that we’ve been failing!

5. What’s the hidden agenda here?

6. What about this, and that, and this, and that…?

7. Your proposal goes too far/doesn’t go far enough.

8. You have a chicken and egg problem.

9. Sounds like [something horrible] to me!

10. You’re abandoning our core values.

11. It’s too simplistic to work.

12. No one else does this.

13. You can’t have it both ways.

14. Aha! What about THIS? [“this” being a worrisome thing that the proposers know nothing about and the attackers keep secret until just the right moment]

15. People have too many concerns.

16. Tried that before—didn’t work.

17. It’s too difficult to understand.

18. Good idea, but the timing is wrong.

19. It’s just too much work to do this.

20. It won’t work here. We’re different.

21. It puts us on a slippery slope.

22. We can’t afford this.

23. You’ll never convince enough people.

24. We’re simply not equipped to do this.

Do you recognize any of these statements that you have used in collaboration with colleagues, co-workers, customers, stakeholder or team members?

Next blog post will look at how we can hold “two truths”, one that represents the list above in a way that does not shut down ideas and fosters innovation.

The Best Place To Work Revisted.

November 9, 2010 in L3 Leadership, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

I have been think a lot about the concept of the “Best Place To Work“ and came up with these 10 items that come up over and over again for me with coaching clients and workshop participants.

What would you add to this list?

Marc’s 10 Characteristics of Best Places To Work

  1. Full utilization of talent at the individual level: Strengths are realized and strategically employed
  2. Proactive support for the Work-life challenge – a state of genuine work/life integration
  3. Alignment of direction and clearly understood purpose across the organization
  4. Expanded leadership at all levels, all supervisors, managers, project leaders working at higher levels of strategic value (less detail)
  5. Aligned systems that drive collaboration towards similar outcomes and mutually beneficial rewards
  6. High trust, high accountability, the elimination of bureaucracy, high levels of  personal and team responsibility
  7. High emotional intelligence behaviors and skills are utilized
  8. The organizational brand is represented by everyone in their daily actions and interactions
  9. There is a natural coaching culture—learning takes place “in process” –feedback is welcomed, and feedforward is offered and received openly
  10. People lead their lives well, come together to build great teams, and have pride in the organizational results

What would you add to this list?

All Leaders Need A Waiting Room

November 5, 2010 in Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.–Peter Drucker

As leaders in an organization, we are charged with the responsibility of creating environments in which our employees are nurtured and energized, our businesses innovate and flourish, our customers are engaged partners and the relationship with our consumers/clients/stakeholders is built on a foundation of mutual trust, fairness and respect.

This is quite a complex assignment in a global economy that measures time in internet seconds, conceives of the past as the most reliable tool for analyzing and assessing how to proceed into the future, is increasingly interdependent and relational, and dedicates little or no time toward the development of presence in its leaders.

Presence is a dynamic and fluid sense of being fully present in body and mind, heart and soul and knowing it.  Being present is being mindful. This combination of taking time for reflection in order to be mindful,  is  very powerful  for sustaining a positive leadership presence.

Creating your own personal space (a waiting room) to practice mindfulness and presence enables you to better direct and sustain your attention, become less reactive,“catch” emerging insights and innovative ideas, deliberately stopping – often in the midst of fast-paced, highly charged business situations – and ask yourself the question, “What is called for now?” rather than falling back on habitual patterns and habits.

Create your waiting room! Find a place you can go to in order to think and reflect before you act in order to behave in ways that will strengthen your relations, build trust and engagement. If you find yourself in a situation that needs your mindfulness and reflection–you can pause, ask for a minute, quiet yourself and reach inside for you wisdom to fuel your reactions.  This works every time!

Collaborative Leaders Are Great Followers

November 3, 2010 in Change Leadership, L3 Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Leadership development by Marc Michaelson | 1 comment

What is Collaboration?

Collaboration is a process where two or more people or organizations work together towards achievement of common goals. A collaborative leader understands the importance of supporting other members of the team.

As a collaborative partner, we are able to shift from focusing on ourselves to the role of a team member participating as part of the team.

Key Questions for Collaborative Leadership

The following key questions will help you to apply this criteria in practice to become an effective Collaborative Leader.

Are you a team player? Do others describe you as a team player?

Collaborating with others means cooperating and operating as a team player. If your team sees you as being an active and supportive member of the team they will be more willing to respect and support you in return. Conversely, if you are seen as remote and self absorbed, then it will be difficult to build trust and and gain the support and power that comes from group trust.

Do you operate from a sense of abundance?

Individuals who see themselves as being in competition – for resources, money, status, praise – will have difficulty letting go of control and allowing others to step up. If you have a robust and healthy sense of self-worth and confidence, and actively work towards creating win-win outcomes you will more easily operate in a collaborative and supportive manner.

How much flexibility do you have in shifting your focus to follower?

One significant challenge for many leaders is that they have become so used to leading that it can be difficult to step back and support others. The term “followership” has been coined, by Ira Chaleff,  to describe someone’s ability to effectively follow the lead of others and collaborative leadership implies the ability of a leader to also act as a follower, enabling team members to lead in their areas of expertise and on their individual assignments.

Being a Collaborative Leader and A Great Follower

There are five dimensions of courageous followership as described by Ira Chaleff in his book “The Courageous Follower”

1. The courage to assume responsibility for common purpose

2. Support others leaders and groups energetically

3. Take moral action when necessary

4. Participate in transformation

5. Constructively challenge counterproductive policies and behaviors

Great followership is a discipline of supporting other leaders and helping them to lead well. This requires shift from leader to follower as needed,  it is not submission, but the wise and good care of the community of leadership that cultivates the creation of collaborative advantage.

Collaborative Leaders Are Great Followers–How are you doing with these two key attributes for effective leadership in our new world of work?