Dave's Journal

Our house is just old enough to start having a few things go wrong. A few of our faucets were giving us trouble recently, so we hired a plumber to come in and replace some of the hardware.

When he completed the work, he took the old hardware that he pulled out of the wall and placed it into the packaging that had come with the new hardware. He then left it near the faucets where the work was completed.

I asked him about this practice, wondering if there was some reason I needed to keep the old hardware. He replied:

Unless it’s too large to dispose of easily, I always leave the old hardware behind. That way, you can see what it looks like and what the issue was.

Based on the look of the hardware, I was glad we replaced it. He expanded on this:

You see, it’s really hard for people to appreciate the value of the work if they don’t see it. I’ve been doing it forever because I find that it helps people feel even more confident that they got something for their money.

I have absolutely zero idea if this is a best practice in running a pluming business or not — but I know it helped me to see the value of his work. More importantly, I got to thinking how rare it is that people do this in their careers.

I’ve heard this complaint many times over the years:

I’m not getting recognized and rewarded for all the value I’m bringing to the organization.

I’m lodged that very same complaint myself. Earlier in my career, I made mention to my boss that the next higher level manager didn’t seem to notice or appreciate the value of contributions I was making.

My boss agreed that the value I was bringing was not fully recognized, but also offered this:

You’re not making your wins very visible.

I thought about that and concluded he was probably right. He suggested that I document some of my wins each week and send those to him on Fridays. He offered to help by working one of those wins into his weekly updates with the more senior manager.

Those small breadcrumbs, left consistently, eventually helped change the perception of my value to senior leadership. Plus, the genius of his invitation to me to take this action was that once I starting documenting my wins, I found ways to make them more visible on my own.

Nobody wants to hear someone bragging about their work all the time, and I’ve concluded it’s just as foolish to assume that good work speaks for itself. In most organizations, senior leaders are simply too busy to pay attention if you don’t help them connect the dots.

It’s up to you to teach people the value of your work. Make key results of your work visible by leaving breadcrumbs along the way. And sometimes, yes, even telling people what you’re good at, as my friend Tom Henschel said so beautifully in a recent episode of The Look & Sound of Leadership.

If you’re in the position to highlight the good work of someone else in your organization, help them find a way to leave breadcrumbs that make their work more apparent. If you do, you’ll help the organization reward great work and you’ll help them become advocates for their careers.

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Awhile back, a client was expressing his frustration with one of his managers. He said:

I’ve delegated the work. I’ve made expectations clear on time, budget, and quality. I’ve set deadlines. But, this person isn’t on track. I see a train wreck coming.

He knew that he could swoop in and take over but, being a good student of leadership, he was fearful of micro-managing. “What to do?” was his question.

I recently stumbled across an article in the Wall Street Journal about an event featuring Warren Buffett. One of the attendees remarked that he was, “Struck by Mr. Buffett’s emphasis on hiring high-quality managers and then getting out of their way.”

The moment I read that, I immediately thought of the situation with my client — and started wondered if I and others have done a great disservice to managers in how much we emphasize delegation.

Warren Buffet is, of course, correct. We should hire the best people and then do as much as we can to get out of their way. I’ve said the same myself to our Academy members and listeners.

And now, with some reflection, I fear that I’ve probably not said enough this next part:

Buffett is describing the ideal. But most of us don’t have the ideal. Most of us didn’t get to pick every member of our team. Most of us don’t have teams of people, all with years of proven track records.

Even when those things are true, almost never does work stay the same. Many of our teams members are doing work they didn’t go to school for — and in some cases, hold jobs that didn’t even exist a few years ago.

In the leadership roles I’ve had in most of my career — and I’m guessing for you too, clear expectations and good people alone haven’t carried the day.

Most team members — and yes, even experienced managers — need support and coaching, especially if the work is new or the situation unfamiliar.

But we are hesitant to step in to help, even when know we probably should, because we fear being labeled as a micro-manager.

It’s not micro-management if everyone’s on board.

It’s not micro-management to assess where someone is and where they need help.

It’s not micro-management to put together a plan to support someone in doing great work.

And it’s certainly not micro-management to agree to check in every few days and spend time training, asking questions, and working through problems.

It’s only micro-management when you do those things, without invitation or buy-in from the employee.

Larry Bossidy is the former CEO and chairman of AlliedSignal and Honeywell. In his book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done* he reports spending almost half his time developing the executives under him.

Think about that. Half of the CEO’s time at one of the largest and most successful companies in the world.

So yes, hire great people and get the heck out of their way if you’re only slowing them down…but don’t claim fear of micro-management as a proxy to not show up.

If you have someone who’s struggling right now, ask how you can help. If they need and want your support, define check-in points over the next few weeks where you can do just that.

You can help coach, open doors, and provide resources while they still own the work.

If you are supporting people by helping them do their jobs better, that’s not micro-managing. It’s the job that managers are called to do.

In 1962, McDonald’s franchisee Lou Groen had a problem. His restaurant, in a predominately Roman Catholic neighborhood, wasn’t attracting customers on Fridays in Lent.

Recognizing an opportunity, the Catholic businessman proposed a new sandwich for McDonald’s menu, called the Filet-O-Fish. Instead of meat, the sandwich featured a fried fish patty with half a slice of cheese and tatar sauce.

McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc was not happy. Fearful that fish sandwiches would smell up all of his restaurants, Kroc created his own menu alternative for Lent:

The Hula Burger.

The Hula Burger was a slice of grilled pineapple, plus cheese, on a bun. Kroc believed it was the answer for their Lenten obstacle.

The dispute between them led to a sales contest. Groen would sell the Filet-O-Fish in his restaurant on the first Friday in Lent. Kroc sold the Hula Burger in another location.

You already know who won. The final score: 350 to 6.

It’s a mistake to reflect on this story and conclude that we should all work to have better ideas. Smart people have bad ideas, all the time. Ray Kroc was, after all, one of the most financially successful business leaders of the 20th century.

Innovative leaders don’t fear bad ideas. They fear not filtering them out.

You have no idea if you have a Hula Burger or a Filet-O-Fish until you test it. Despite his personal feelings about the fish sandwich, Kroc was knew it was up to his customers to decide.

How invested are you with your “good idea” before you’ve talked to a single customer about it? Challenge your team to test all kinds of ideas so you’ll quickly surface what works…and what doesn’t.

Over a decade ago, I arrived for a client presentation on a Friday afternoon. I’d contracted with the client for an hour in front of his team and had prepared an extensive series of exercises to teach several communication skills.

I was a bit skeptical we could achieve the stated objectives in a single hour, but had agreed to the abridged timing to help him out. There were a number of logistical constraints that made other options impractical.

The meeting kicked off and my client got in front of the room to introduce me. Before he did, he addressed some company news that happened earlier in the day.

I’ve long since forgotten the news, but I recall exactly what happened next.

Questions. Lots of them.

Ten minutes into the hour, the questions were still coming.

I frantically starting re-arranging the outline in my head, assuming I’d perhaps have only have 45 minutes. I removed an entire section, trimmed my opening, and quickly re-thought the summary.

My client made eye contact and nodded to me, indicating he knew he was bleeding into my time. Yet, it was clear from his team’s response that he needed to address the reaction immediately.

Five more minutes of questions. I trimmed even more.

My client finally started introducing me, seemingly satisfied he’d addressed the immediate issue…

…only for someone else to bring up a related problem that generated even more questions.

When I finally got introduced, I had 24 minutes to achieve objectives I had been skeptical about doing in an hour. Adding insult to injury, I was mentally exhausted, having just spend almost 40 minutes feeling panicked at the back of the room.

I learned a valuable lesson that day:

When presenting to influential people, assume the agenda will change.

No, my client wasn’t good at managing a meeting agenda. No, it wasn’t fair to have to rewrite my presentation half a dozen times. But here’s the thing:

Nobody cared.

The two dozen people in the room didn’t know that I’d been promised an hour. Even my client, aware that he had gone into my time, later described it as “just a couple of minutes.”

He wasn’t trying to be difficult. On the contrary, he was a great ambassador for our work and had opened up tons of doors for us for in both past and future projects. Like a lot of executive leaders, he simply had too much on his mind and no concept of how much he was talking.

Rewriting my agenda at the back of the room was, ironically, some of the best presentation training I ever had. Going forward, I almost always had multiple versions of any presentation or briefing ready for a client or executive team. I discovered that the more influential the audience, the more likely timing will change with little or no warning.

Are you showing up to serve, or to be served?

If you have the privilege to present to an influential audience, it’s not about you. You’re there to serve them.

Decide what the audience needs to hear — and have several timing paths prepared to get there. If you can adapt on the fly, a few minutes in front of an influential audience may be worth more to your career than a year behind your desk.

In the part of the world I live in, it’s a common greeting to ask:

Hi. How are you?

And then to reply:

Great. How about you?

Usually that’s returned with some version of “doing well” or other generic, positive-sounding statement.

This exchange regularly happens as two people run into each other in passing. Often, it’s used as a form of acknowledgement with someone we have a casual relationship with.

What it’s not, is a conversation. Rarely does anybody listen to the actual responses. If you dare to interrupt this pattern by responding in a way that isn’t expected, such as “actually, I’m having a tough day,” people are a bit taken aback and rarely ready to engage in any kind of meaningful way.

In fact, my seven-year old pointed out to me recently that I often respond with the word, “likewise” in order to shorten the exchange after the inevitable “Great. How about you?” question. I’ve now engaged him as my coach and have asked him to point out to me this verbal tick — and he does so, with perfect consistency.

Virtually anybody I’ve ever discussed this with also finds this cultural norm odd, and yet, most of us go on doing it.

I’m not suggesting any of us invest any effort into changing broad, cultural norms — but it has caused me to notice something that’s almost universally true:

Our first response isn’t the full story.

Since so many of us have been conditioned to move quickly, get the information we need, and move onto the next thing, we’ve been conditioned to make a lot of our language as efficient as possible.

Especially in our professional environments.

For most of us, it’s been the exception when someone — a manager, mentor, or peer — regularly asked a question of us and actually listened for the answer.

As a result, it’s the nature for a lot of us to reveal what’s really happening, in stages. In fact, it makes sense that we do that. Why waste the time getting into a really deep conversation with someone who isn’t really interested or willing to take the time.

I saw this front and center as a corporate trainer. Often, a topic of discussion would come up about something fairly complex, such as leadership, and the initial responses were fairly generic.

I soon realized the practical learning came from quality discussions, not just quantity of responses. Whenever I’d hear a brief, somewhat generic response to a question, I found myself asking:

How so?

If someone talked about having a difficult time with handling conflict, I’d ask:

How so?

If someone said they discovered a way to organize their schedule better, I’d wonder:

How so?

If someone claimed they were struggling with delegating work, I’d respond:

How so?

I worked hard to always be in a state of curiosity, each time I asked this question. As a facilitator, I found myself aching to find out what was behind people’s initial statements.

As this emerged as a habit for me, along with related invitations like “Tell me more,” two things happened that worked great.

First, I heard a ton more detail about situations. Often, this detail would provide an incredible discovery for both of us and others in the conversation — and also illuminate a next step when we were trying to solve a problem.

The second thing was surprising.

Often, when I asked, “how so?” and started listening for more, the real situation, problem, or concern would emerge — one that had nothing to do with what was first stated.

I kept noticing how much more we all opened up with more detail — and sometimes, with what was really going on, when someone bothered to be curious.

Now, you be curious too by asking “How so?” If you do, you’ll be entering into conversations that actually make things better.

When someone is working on a new idea they’ve shared with my in confidence, I often find myself suggesting that they also get input from their peers, executive team, or customer.

Sometimes that generates a comment like this:

If I start socializing this idea, somebody else will take credit for it.

Often, but not always, a response like this comes from someone who has learned from past attempts that it’s best not to share ideas publicly, simply to watch another person take credit later.

Yes, I hear this more often from women — but not only from women. Those of us who are quieter in groups often struggle with this, too. I know it’s heartbreaking and demoralizing to watch someone else get credit for your idea.

But we can take steps to prevent it.

May Busch, author of the book Accelerate: 9 Capabilities to Achieve Success at Any Career Stage, appeared on Coaching for Leaders awhile back. Her advice for us when we have a great idea?

Tell as many people as you can.

But why? Two reasons:

First, the more people you talk about your idea with, the better your idea gets. You get people thinking about your idea, finding holes in it, improving upon it, telling you who in the organization will oppose it or support it.

In short, the more you socialize an idea, the better it gets.

Second, the more you socialize your idea, the more people associate it with you. It’s a lot harder for someone to claim credit for your idea in an executive roundtable when you’ve just spent the prior two weeks collaborating on it with 7 other people in the room.

But here’s the real hack. And perhaps, way more valuable than making sure that you get credit for the idea.

Collaborating with others on your idea, especially if you do it with more than just a few people, means that you have to do something about it. It means you need to take ownership for it. It means you need to show up.

Because your real problem isn’t keeping your idea from being stolen. In the digital age, new ideas aren’t that hard to generate.

No, your real problem is never moving on at least some of your ideas.

The more you start talking about your ideas, the more you start creating movement for them. Become the kind of leader who becomes a catalyst for crafting ideas, makes them better by collaborating with others, and then moves forward to create change. If you start doing that well, ain’t nobody going to be able to steal that.

On December 29, 1972, Eastern Airlines flight 401 crashed in the Florida Everglades just outside of Miami, killing 101 people. It was the first ever crash of a wide-body aircraft and is still one of the deadliest events in aviation history.

This crash is often referenced when pilots learn a phrase that’s especially useful in emergency situations: aviate, navigate, communicate.

Aviate means, first and foremost, keep the airplane flying. Navigate means to know where you are in relation to the terrain around you. Finally, if and when time allows, communicate with others and air traffic controllers.

The key is to make sure it happens in that order. When there is trouble, keep the plane in the air. Stay aware of where you are and where you are going. Finally, communicate if you can.

For whatever reason, things didn’t happen that way on flight 401. A landing gear indicator light burned out and it quickly consumed the attention of all three people in the cockpit. So much so that they didn’t notice the autopilot becoming disengaged. This resulted in a controlled descent right into the ground.

When things get complicated, it’s human nature for all of us to fixate on the most visible indicator in front of us. Sometimes, to the detriment of the larger goal.

The job of leadership is rarely to fixate on the issue of the moment. Rather, it’s to see the big picture, hold the vision for everyone, and navigate change, even in the midst of short-term obstacles.

If you’re handling a tough situation right now, are your team and you consumed with a single indicator — or are you first and foremost, flying the plane?

A friend of mine who’s leading a small business sent me a message today. He wrote:

I have a very hard time marketing, selling, etc. I need to just grit my teeth and be confident.

When I read those words, I immediately messaged him back and suggested that he spend exactly zero time trying to grit his teeth and be more confident.

Like him, at almost every stage of my career, I’ve wanted more confidence. The problem is that virtually none of us seem to be able to wish or will our way to confidence. Despite every grand intention I’ve had of being more confident, that alone has never moved the needle.

I finally stumbled on a better approach when I became a Dale Carnegie instructor, 15 years ago. Carnegie courses are incredible at helping people develop confidence — and I soon discovered why.

Carnegie instructors merely invited people to take the first step in doing hard things. Whether it was speaking in front of others for the first time, or expressing a different opinion, or building better human relations skills, our manta was clear:

Help people take a successful, first step.

In essence, encouraging bravery. The people who were willing to regularly feel the fear at do it anyway often found their confidence.

If you, like my friend, and like me, want more confidence, stop chasing it. Confidence is a lagging indicator. It’s what comes over time. You cannot force confidence today, hard as you and I have tried many times.

Almost certainly there’s a first step right now that is scary for you, but you know that if you did regularly, over time, would help you find your confidence.

Today, my invitation to you, just like to my friend, is to stop wasting time trying to build your confidence. Instead, simply do one, single act of bravery each day. If you are able to master the discipline of consistent bravery, you’ll eventually find all the confidence you’ll ever need.