ChoinqueCast

In a recent coaching call, a client shared a significant challenge - how to grow a team from 200 to possibly 700 this calendar year - without having the proverbial “wheels come off.” We talked about the importance of front line supervisors who take care of the teams at “the tip of the spear.” The topic of accountability came up.

Recall from our Academy Leadership Excellence Courses that 83% of organizations have accountability issues. Kelly and Robby Riggs concur in Counter Mentor Leadership. They describe accountability struggles as a twofold problem: The BOSS doesn’t know how to create a culture of accountability; then there is an issue, the BOSS doesn’t truly address the issue.

The Riggs’ visualize a useful construct, the Freedom Box. Imagine a rectangular box with four primary boundaries:

• Company values and/or guiding principles.
• Expectations.
• Level of Authority.
• Performance standards and metrics.

Our values, expectations and performance standards can be expressed within our Personal Leadership Philosophy. Our level of authority provides delegation and coaching guidance. Putting this all together, the Freedom Box creates an agreed-upon area of autonomy. Just what we need for a rapidly growing organization, rather than having the wheels fall off. Leaders create accountability.

In choinquecast eleven we meet the author of “Disrupt Yourself," Whitney Johnson, who developed her proprietary framework and diagnostics after having founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen. This framework is complemented by a deep understanding of how executives create and destroy value, having spent nearly a decade as an Institutional Investor ranked equity analyst on Wall Street.

In addition to her work as a speaker and advisor, Whitney is one of Marshall Goldsmith’s original cohort of 25 for the #100 Coaches Project, is a coach for Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program, frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, is a Linkedin influencer, and hosts the twice-monthly Disrupt Yourself Podcast.

“Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more
than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback.”

from Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen’s eye-opening Thanks for the Feedback candidly and systematically breaks down why receiving feedback is so difficult and what we as leaders and our organizations can do about it. Notice the emphasis on receiving feedback rather than offering it. How many times has someone in a senior leadership position asked you for candid feedback about themselves or the organization rather than offering you feedback or telling you something that you “ought to do?”

Does your organization even have a learning culture? Or is it the type organization where a “this is the way we’ve always done it” mindset prevails.

The authors remind us there are three forms of feedback: Appreciation, evaluation, and coaching. Most of us understand appreciation, but often mix up evaluation with coaching. Years of facilitating leadership courses and executive coaching suggests many people and organizations will claim coaching occurs, but more often than not evaluation is occurring rather than coaching. As a result, performance coaching gets a bad rap. An easy indicator: Who is doing the talking in the coaching session? If you are talking more than 25% of the time, it’s not coaching. It’s not even listening.

Indicating your commitment to receiving feedback in your Personal Leadership Philosophy is a great first step. Welcoming it comes next. Leaders embrace feedback.

The scarcity mindset. What is that? According to Whitney Johnson in Disrupt Yourself it is the failure to see the abundance in another person’s success and is actually a form of entitlement. Her antidote: A gratitude journal, or a written list of three things you are thankful for each day and why.

To some degree, we all seem to be conditioned by this both destructive, and limiting, mindset. For example, in our Academy leadership Leveraging the Power of Conflict workshops, we learn that a win-lose mindset is not an effective leader mindset, rather a gain-gain (think compromise) mindset is better or a win-win (think collaborative) mindset is the best conflict leadership strategy. It seems there is an inverse relationship between the degree of scarcity mindset and the degree of coaching or leadership effectiveness.

That’s worth thinking about.

J.K. Rowling comes to mind. One person imagined and shared with us the world of Harry Potter, influencing tens or hundreds of millions of people, yet without just her it would not exist. Imagining Harry Potter did not come at the expense of anyone or anything. The abundance mindset allows for this, the possibility of unlimited potential and outcomes for all.

Dr. Brené Brown likewise believes the scarcity mindset disables progress — in ourselves — in addition to others. In her extraordinary book Daring Greatly, she describes ten guideposts, or ways of engaging the world from a place of worthiness. One guidepost is letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark in order to cultivate gratitude and joy. 

The next time the scarcity mindset begins influencing you or those around you, consider disrupting yourself or daring greatly. Leaders seek abundance.

Two recent client exchanges are worth sharing. The first was a visit to Tesla’s Gigafactory site in Nevada, the second a series of conversations with a director at a major health care consortium.

Both on the drive to the Gigafactory site with a client and as a passenger on numerous Uber trips in Reno, discussion about the local area centered on the tectonic transformation occurring in the Reno/Sparks area. Viewing the corporate infrastructure footprint of not just Tesla, but other companies such as Amazon, Apple and Switch makes one think of the vision leading to this transformation.

On the other hand, my discussion with the health care director focused almost exclusively on the process of implementing a single Project Portfolio Management software tool. Interestingly, the director mentioned concerns about internal survey scores and how to compete for talent in the Silicon Valley area. Not a word about improved lives through healthcare or any mention of people.

Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao’s book Scaling Up Excellence came to mind, especially chapter three which focuses on finding the “hot cause,” or overarching purpose that must be driven through an organization. Not just words on a poster in the lobby, but relentlessly demonstrated as the core mission and even better aligned with one’s Personal Leadership Philosophy.

Think about that. How well and how frequently do you communicate the big picture rather than the immediate project at hand to your team? Leaders share vision and purpose.

Choinquecast ten introduces Dr. Amy Cooper Hakim, an industrial-organizational psychology practitioner and workplace expert. She is a speaker, author, and the executive consultant and founder of The Cooper Strategic Group. She helps employees and employers to get along better, and coaches leaders and employees to improve productivity, morale, satisfaction, and overall work-life balance. Her book, Working with Difficult People, recently hit #1 in sales at Amazon for Business Etiquette books and was highlighted in Parade Magazine.

Dr. Hakim has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC, Fast Company, CNBC Make It, Vogue, Inc., The List, and Star-Telegram. She has also been a guest on the KRTH Morning Show, Think KERA Radio, the WBEZ Morning Shift, the Boca Voice, and Business Radio on Sirius XM. 

It’s pop quiz time again. What are the four most dangerous words in a leader’s vocabulary?

According to Kelly & Bobby Riggs -- in their pathfinder book, Counter Mentor Leadership -- the answer is:

"I don’t have time."

Let’s do a quick self-evaluation: When is the last time you said that to yourself, or, even worse, when was the last time you told that to someone you are responsible for? What are we really telling someone when we communicate that, directly or indirectly?

I don’t have time to listen to you, to coach you, or to take an interest in your life. Gee, why do we have a turnover problem in the company?

I don’t have time to slow down, breath, and express daily gratitude. Gee, maybe that’s why I’m taking all these over the counter pills and ignoring annual medical checkups.

I don’t have time for training and development of anyone on my team, nor myself. Gee, nobody seems engaged around here and we don’t really know or care about each other.

Priorities lead to clarity. Share your priorities. And learn to say no to the many distractions we encounter daily. Leaders make time.

In choinquecast nine we’re introduced to the power of attention management by Maura Nevel Thomas, an award-winning international speaker, trainer, and author on individual and corporate productivity, attention management, and work-life balance.

Maura has trained thousands using her Empowered Productivity™ System, a process for achieving significant results and living a life of choice. She is a TEDx speaker, successful entrepreneur, and author of Personal Productivity Secrets and Work Without Walls. She is featured in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, US News and World Report, and the Huffington Post.

She appears weekly in business outlets such as FastCompany, Inc., Forbes, and the Harvard Business Review. Maura is active in her local community of Austin, Texas, where she has held volunteer leadership positions in a variety of different community organizations and charities. Maura offers quarterly pro-bono presentations to nonprofits and donates a percentage of all her revenues to charity.

Have you ever wondered why some days are exhausting and some days seem magically energizing? There’s no shortage of management and efficiency books and exercises offering advice how we may manage our time better. However, like the best athletes, the most effective leaders focus on energy levels, not time.

In Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s marvelous book, The Power of Full Engagement, two paradigms are compared. In the

Old Paradigm

Manage time
Avoid stress
Life is a marathon
Downtime is wasted time
Rewards fuel performance
Self-discipline rules
The power of positive thinking

Were you brought up that way? Many of us were. By studying top athletes, the authors found a

New Paradigm

Manage energy
Seek stress
Life is a series of sprints
Downtime is productive time
Purpose fuels performance
Rituals rule
The power of full engagement

Think of lions in the wild. They spend most of their time resting, until it is time to hunt. Then it’s all out until a successful kill. As leaders we should always focus our energy in a positive way, between relaxed or tranquil states and invigorated or challenged states. We should avoid negative energy, since it is wasted. Think about it. Leaders manage energy.

How well do you communicate with others? Do your subordinates and team perform as well as you would like? Have you thought about how you might improve your communication skills and raise your game?

Christine Comaford, author of Smart Tribes, mentions five types of communication in her Clarity of Intentions and Energy section — Information sharing, requests, promises, sharing of oneself and debating, decision-making or point proving.

Pop quiz time. Only two of these five types of communication actually drive results. Which two do you think they are? Just two. Hint: It’s not point proving.

According to Comaford, only requests and promises actually drive results. It sounds very simple, but it’s powerfully clarifying.

Ever been in a meeting where only information sharing occurred, a one-way broadcast that never led to anything? We all have. Without specific requests and subsequent promises or commitments, what is there to be accountable for? 

Keep in mind requests and promises the next time you compose an email, talk on the phone, attend a meeting, or especially, delegate to a team member. 

Make it a new habit. Leaders effectively communicate.